Culture, Politics & the Role of Religious Freedom
I don’t think it gets any more Libertarian than to state that Governments who make you dependent on them are diabolical.
As I’ve often said online, “if we don’t teach our kids how to build on generational wealth, we will condemn them to a lifetime of welfare dependency.”
Therefore, we fight not for attention. We fight for posterity.
To do that effectively, we must fight to save the concept of liberty that encourages responsibility.
Where dependency is the bloated bureaucracy’s zero-sum end game, faith, family and freedom must remain our ultimate end goals.
With this comes the need to protect our God-given rights. The right to property and the protection of it. The right to individual responsibility. The right to worship. The freedom to think and speak without fear of litigation or state-sanctioned punishment.
The Return to Objective Truth and Individual Responsibility.
As UK Trigonometry host, Konstantine Kisin pointed out in his opening remarks at this year’s Alliance for Responsible Citizenship:
There is a clear line between liberty and liberalism.
On one side, there is freedom. On the other side, there is the abuse of it.
“Liberty matters,” he said, “not because it maximises individual pleasure. That is liberalism’s mistake.”
“Liberty matters because you cannot be a responsible citizen if you’re not free.”
For Kisin, liberty is the grounding characteristic of the responsible citizen.
Liberalism is the polar opposite. It negates liberty through indulgence without restraint. This is why liberalism often disallows dissent and other avenues for restraining the state.
Such as the right to protest government overreach and the institutional, bureaucratic and corporate compliance with the abuse of power.
We saw this during COVID, when Bureaucrats made Brothels, bottle-o’s and Bunnings essential services, then told Christian pastors to close their churches and stay home.
As Kisin explained, “a man who does the right thing because the state compels him to is not virtuous. He’s compliant.”
“And because of that, [he’s] dangerous for the obvious reason. When the state compels him to do the wrong thing, he will comply as well.”
“Virtue,” Kisin argued, “requires choice.”
“Responsibility requires freedom and freedom requires responsibility.”
While liberty and liberalism are distinct from each other, freedom and responsibility are not.
“They’re the same thing,” he said, “seen from different angles.”
For instance, he argued, “the free market without moral responsibility gives you the financialization of everything.”
We need to understand what freedom is for. Personal liberty without this understanding is why all that liberty has built is breaking apart.
“Freedom of speech,” for example, “without the courage to tell the truth gives you a cacophony of noise and no signal.”
Because ARC’s theme this year was Reconstruction, Kisin argued, the current mess “will take decades to fix.”
This is because “generations of Westerners have been taught to hate their own civilisation.”
“They’ve been taught up is down, good is evil.”
“Everyone is by now familiar with the saying that hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And weak men create hard times.”
Well, Kisin declared, “the weak men have done their bit. And the hard times are here.”
Biblical Relevance.
His dire post-apocalyptic assessment isn’t wrong.
Although unmentioned, his comments aligned with two millennia of Christian doctrine. Specifically, Matthew 7:12 and the golden rule, Ordo Amoris and the Imago Dei.
Kisin’s firm Biblical undertones are undeniable.
The theme taps into Moses and the Exodus, Jesus and the Cross.
What Kisin is pointing to is the stark difference between a house of freedom and a house of slavery. (John 8:36; Romans 8:15; Galatians 5:1)
As Anglican Minister J.C. Ryle wrote in 1889 when admonishing the complacency of the Belle Époque (the so-called beautiful age):
“No cross. No crown!”
Liberty is not liberalism. Nuance need not apply.
Well inside this zone, Kisin ends his speech with an exhortation to teach kids by example.
Teach them, he asserted, to discern between disagreement and hate, speech and violence; truth and falsehood.
Teach them, “that people who disagree with you about politics are human.”
“Above all,” Kisin declared, “we must teach our children to separate the comforting lie from the unpleasant truth and give them the courage to want to do it.”
Teach them “to take responsibility.”
“Not by government dictate, not through the use of force, but by a voluntary choice.”
“Exercised not only for the sake of your family and your community,” Kisin concluded, “but that of your own soul.”
Historical Warnings.
Likewise, Albert Camus (Ka-moo). He was a golden boy of the French left-wing elite until he defected.
Criticising the French Communists in a book called ‘The Rebel’, Camus (Ka-moo) was later cancelled by Jean Sartre for publishing it.
Much like the late and legendary former American leftist David Horowitz, Camus’s (Ka-moo) “road to Damascus” moment came after witnessing a deafening silence from the French Communist clique he belonged to.
Western communists refused to protest Soviet tanks mowing down Hungarians in the 1956 freedom uprising.
Pre-empting our age of post-modern paralysis and political correctness, he once wrote,
“Systemic relativism leads to the death of intelligence and the oppression of the worker.”
Camus (Ka-moo) would later state that “whoever says the sky is blue when it is grey is prostituting words and preparing the way for tyranny.”
How true is this of society today?
Cultural Marxists with Maoist red book in hand are succeeding at replacing the Bible with the cold, dead bony fingers of Communism.
They’ve dethroned Jesus Christ and put Karl Marx in Christ’s rightful, Kingly place.
Hayek on Relativism as Tyranny.
As the great economist, Fredrick Hayek observed in 1944,
‘The intensity of moral emotions behind [socialist] movements like Nazism and Communism can probably be compared only to those of the great religious movements of history.’
A man who suffered at the hands of this firsthand was the Reverend Richard Wurmbrand, who, when testifying to state-sanctioned torture under the Soviets, declared, ‘[Marxism] occupies a position previously reserved for God’
This is becoming true of Australia today.
Marx’s Promethean monstrosity is preached from the hallowed halls of power where socialism was once met with reasoned suspicion and just criticism.
Replacing individual responsibility is a politics of envy, which perpetuates a victimhood class through what’s referred to as Intersectionality.
Whereby the oppressor can never be the oppressed.
Critical Race Theory and Ethnic Cleansing.
Critical Race Theory, for example, determines that your lighter shade of melanin automatically makes you the oppressor.
So-called “antiracists” are clear: your skin colour automatically makes you the problem.
Regardless of upbringing, any trauma you may have experienced, or proof, if you are White, Christian and straight, your very existence is deemed to be corrosive.
You’re freedom of speech? The language of the oppressor. Debate? NO! That’s all hate speech. Disagreement? Write that down as betrayal.
The Stars and Crosses (National Flag)? Bigoted and racist! Even Milk? Also racist. Coon cheese? Nope, cancel the family name and change the branding.
Fear the far-right, the far-left says, as they march against women like Moira Deeming, Sal Grover and Kirralie Smith – simply for speaking truthfully about binary biology, and the Trans takeover of female-only spaces.
Fear the far-right, the far-left says as their prostitution of the language shifts the goalposts to protect the Marxian Woke agenda.
According to the ideology, you are no longer a person; you are an oppressor. Dehumanised. Easy to justify hating on, or worse.
As I’ve warned, the ultimate aim of Critical Race Theory’s false image of power, and its Intersectional, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion cousin, is ethnic cleansing.
For example, take a good look at the two-tier justice once COVID’s “two weeks to cancel the curve” turned into totalitarianism.
We were told that Black Lives Matter riots and protests were not superspreader events, but anti-mandate rallies were.
Anti-terror police targeted Australian citizens with rubber bullets; some were sent to prison.
This isn’t just selective treatment; it’s the result of social justice sectarianism.
And its advocates are quick to fire off genetic fallacies in its defence. Such as, “you’re not one of us, so you can’t voice an opinion” because they’ve made you the “problem.”
The Marxist Mob Comes for Dave Hughes.
We witnessed an example of this in June, when Comedian Dave Hughes a lifelong Australian Labor voter, jumped ship.
Hughesy was one of the many who bought the lie that “life would be easy under Albanese.”
After speaking out against the 2026 budget, the “Marxism or bust” crowd started howling at him for being too Bougie (Bourgeois).
Note how The Betoota Advocate weren’t pleased with Hughes hitting out against Labor’s hypocritical betrayal of voters.
With genetic fallacy in hand, that gatekeeper of left-wing satire took a swipe at the veteran comedian, suggesting that his lack of economic qualifications disqualified him from having an opinion.
Share an opinion and evidence-based arguments in the name of persuasion, and activists will shut you down with antagonism, misdirection and emotional manipulation.
From “abortion is healthcare,” to “Islam is a religion of peace”, to “safe and effective,” hate speech laws and the so-called “love is love,” tyrannical degeneracy of the LGBTQ+ lawfare state, Camus’s (Ka-moo) assessment about the future post-modern abuse of language – the prostitution of words – is profoundly relevant.
It should never be forgotten that “the Nazi group in charge of the actual killing in the gas chambers – were called the General Welfare Foundation for Institutional Care…’
Self-inflicted Wounds.
We can also learn a lot from C.S Lewis.
In his essay ‘The Poison of Subjectivism,’ Lewis warned that subjectivism gives totalitarianism a golden opportunity to assert itself.
This is because under subjectivism, we don’t just lose a reverential fear of God that governs freedom and responsibility; we lose the capacity to discern between good and evil, truth and falsehood.
Abandoning true north, Lewis said, opens the doors to “fatal superstitions.”
“Unless the measuring rod is independent of the things measured, we can do no measuring.”
“The very idea of freedom,” he asserted, “presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike.”
“Subjectivism about values,” Lewis continued, “is eternally incompatible with democracy.”
“Unless we return to the crude and nursery-like belief in objective values, he warned, “we perish.”
Put simply, under “you do you” relativism – which views truth as either unknowable or fluid – the rules become fluid, and the ruled subject to the whim of the ruler.
But as Lewis concluded, “if we return to the objective view, then the ruler is held to a higher standard.”
“What is demanded of them are qualities that outlive feel-good fashion and well-intentioned trends.
This objective view “demands qualities much rarer and much more beneficial: virtue, knowledge, diligence and skill.”
The Cost of Dechristianisation.
Effective reconstruction of the West, to borrow from this year’s theme for ARC, requires this and more.
We must reawaken Australians from the broader apathy afflicting its voting masses.
Morrison’s “quiet Australians” no longer have the luxury of being the “silent majority.”
Because, like it or not, the truth is that as a consequence of the weaponisation of mass immigration, they will soon become a voting minority.
The clueless Morgans flirting with Communism in Canberra need to be reminded that they are elected to serve the people, not the self-interest of the Australian Labor Party.
From the Net Zero Nanny State, to the Climate grift, to digital dystopianism, this champagne socialism needs an antidote.
Reconstruction, as former Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali argued at ARC, requires reChristianisation – the stark reminder that God is God, government is not.
Any Government who asserts otherwise is a government gone wrong.
What has deChristianisation handed us?
It’s replaced God the Father with Daddy Government dependency.
We’ve gone from relying on God to guide Western civics through peril and prosperity – via the offices of both Gospel and Sword; Church. And. State. – to looking to the government as provider for “all our needs according to its riches and glory.”
We all now carry the overbearing weight of the ever-increasing welfare state.
The state’s hooked-on-handouts culture has made Australians way too comfortable with compliance.
Australia’s flirtation with socialism is burning what’s left of civil liberties and the democratic social contract.
Bureaucrats use this to pull any heart-string that helps them stay in power.
During COVID: examples included the popularity of lockdowns, mask mandates, and mass censorship.
With ease, the government bypassed constitutional guarantees in favour of rule by bureaucratic decree.
All these are symptoms of a greater problem.
The bloated bureaucracy, or the “bureaucratic blob” as the Brits call it, knows that after deChristianisation comes the total deification of the authoritarian state.
Citizens who are doped up, docile, diseased, divorced, and dependent are easier to control.
If there is no absolute truth, then the state will assert itself as the single source of it.
The great Fredrick Hayek speaks here as well:
“Give the totalitarian,” he said, “the docile, the lazy, the gullible, those with vague and imperfectly formed ideas and those who have no strong convictions of their own, and out of them the totalitarian, through the propagandist, will make an army.” (Road to serfdom)
That is the Left’s playbook. It’s what Mao did.
We see it here in every election.
Manipulative slogans duping a docile public. Such as: Labor’s Mediscare lies, the sudden appearance of “SAVE TAFE” signs, and the term “Climate denier.”
No doubt we will see “Save NDIS” and “STOP so-called ‘Islamophobia” join that cacophony of well-placed manipulative propaganda too.
Again, Governments who make you dependent on them are diabolical.
Australia’s Slide Into Subjectivism Ends in Totalitarianism.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that in Australia we are witnessing the slow slide into totalitarianism.
And alarmingly, there are far too many of us happy to “go along to get along” with the government telling us what to think.
To paraphrase Hayek, a key trait of totalitarianism is the complete “perversion of language.” Included here is a change to the meaning of words. All designed to reinforce the ideals of the totalitarian state.
We need to get back to objective truth. Only then can we stand a chance of holding wayward governments accountable.
And there’s an urgency to this.
An emerging generation of Australians are being sold lies by wannabe Marxian Woke authoritarians who, from the pulpits and classrooms of cushy taxpayer jobs, preach that good is evil and evil is good.
Post-Modern Paralysis.
Few illustrations about the emerging sectarian destruction of democracy – under subjectivism – are as apt as 19th-century Baptist Preacher Charles Spurgeon’s ‘Donkey in the ditch.’
An old man and his young son were driving a donkey to market.
They’re soon stopped by a man who tells them they’ve let the donkey ride too light.
So, the old man puts his son up on the donkey and continues on foot.
Another man comes along, criticises the boy for being lazy and making his dad walk.
So, the old man takes his son down, then gets on the donkey.
A third person comes along and criticises the old man, saying he too was being lazy.
So, the pair end up riding the donkey together.
Yet another person rocks up and mocks the pair for overloading the donkey.
‘Well,’ says the old man, ‘and what am I to do now?”
“For I am laughed at, if either the donkey be empty, or if one of us rides, or both.”
Confused, the father and son then bound the donkey’s legs with a cord, and tried to carry him to market with a pole upon each of their shoulders.
This was sport to everybody that saw it, Spurgeon noted.
Because that old man in great wrath then threw the donkey into a river, and returned home.
The good man was willing to please everybody, and lost his donkey in the process” (‘The Complete John Ploughman’)
A blatant absence of absolute truth led to absolute chaos. Subjectivism and the fear of being called names turned the father and the son’s resolve, purpose and mission to mush.
This is akin to moral failure, bad government, and poor stewardship.
The donkey in the ditch testifies to moral abdication.
As much as it does to the failings of bureaucrats who seek to keep ideologies like multiculturalism on life support.
As Spurgeon remarked:
“Accommodating the high opinions of those around, and not wanting to offend, negated the very purpose of their journey, harming not only themselves, but also the donkey.”
The Nice Citizen vs. The Good citizen.
The analogy teaches the difference between being a ‘good citizen’ and a ‘nice citizen’. The freedom to let our “yes” be yes, and our “no” mean no.
Camus (Ka-moo), Hayek and Lewis were all aware of the truism that control of the language means control of the argument, and therefore control of the people.
When declaring Democracy to be on Trial, Lutheran political scientist Jean Bethke Elshtain wrote,
“‘Western democracies are not doing a good job of nurturing democratic dispositions.”
They’ve turned away from “encouraging people to accept that they can’t always get what they want – and that politics cannot solve some of the solutions they seek.”
Western Democracies untethered from the Western Christian tradition are Spurgeon’s donkey in the ditch.
Constitutional democracy in Australia isn’t just on trial; it’s in trouble.
Not because of the so-called far-right, but because it’s forgotten the clear difference between truth and falsehood.
For further proof of this, take a good look at this year’s Australian Christian Freedom Index.
The report is the first ever investigation into the downgrade of religious freedom in Australia from the Christian perspective.
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
Real-life examples include everyday Australians like Dr Jereth Kok and Bernard Gaynor – whose lives and livelihoods have been upended by lawfare.
The report shows that “Australia’s cherished freedoms, poorly protected by assumption rather than hard constitutional law, can no longer be treated as immune to infection.”
In the United States, this was evident in the vile gloating from the Woke-Left over the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
As does the recent slaying of pro-life conservative Ann Widdecombe in the UK.
As does the silence over the Islamist slaughter of Nigerians.
These global examples testify to a more violent endgame.
The poison of subjectivism is feeding the usurpation of Western civil society, social cohesion and civics.
Other than just waking up the apathetic Australian, we need to remind our representatives that they are not a law unto themselves.
Governments should play a subsidiary role, not a substitutionary role in our lives.
A government which substitutes itself for God is a government gone wrong.
When government dethrones God, it disqualifies its right to govern.
People who give governments the role of God in their lives are no longer a free people.
Joseph Ratzinger, the Pope who stepped down, once said, “We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything.”
Good government is never above that community, but part of it.
So said Saint Augustine: ‘Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminals…’
The strong are not allowed to protect the weak. The weak are not allowed to be protected by the strong.
As Gulag survivor, Alexander Solzhenitsyn warned those gathered at Harvard in 1971,
“When we don’t apply a moral criteria to politics, we mix good and evil, right and wrong. This makes space for the triumph of absolute evil in the world”
Revival, Reformation, Repentance and Renewal.
Finally, Charlie Daniels was right when he quipped:
I don’t mind paying taxes. But it makes my temper itch when those hard-won earnings go towards making politicians rich.
What this world needs isn’t more bureaucrats, he asserted.
It needs people who respect the Lord and the working man.
These are the kinds of people we need more of because they have a higher power driving conviction and providing them with the courage it takes to make a stand.
The writing is on the wall.
It’s Christ of chaos.
Without this essential objective ingredient to the moral criterion, like the donkey, Democracy is headed for the ditch.
As the Good Book declares: Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be fulfilled.
You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.
Thank you.
First delivered Tuesday 4th August, 2026 in Wauchope, NSW.
© Rod Lampard, 2026.