Aussie Politician Threatens To Contact Employers of Satirical Article "Likers" 195
Chuq writes "Tasmanian Liberal candidate for Bass, Andrew Nikolic, was the subject of a satirical article by NewExaminer on Facebook. Nikolic didn't like it, which is understandable. However he then went to considerable lengths to identify the people who liked the article, find out their employers (via their Facebook profiles) and 'name and shame' them on a follow-up post on his own page. Andrew Nikolic has a history of poorly handling conflicting views on his Facebook page, resulting in creation of another page, 'Andrew Nikolic blocked me.'"
Not even a politician (Score:5, Informative)
He's not even a politician - he's preselected to run as a candidate in the as-yet-unscheduled federal election, which isn't likely to occur until 2013.
Re:This guy's a liberal? (Score:5, Informative)
he's a "big L" Liberal.
Confusingly in Australia, the Liberal Party are the conservatives and the Labor Party are the liberals (with the Greens to the left of them).
Of course, our Liberal Party would probably be to the left of the US's congressional democrats on most issues..
--Q
Re:Typical neoconspam (Score:5, Informative)
"Liberal" in Australia's Liberal Party refers to economic liberalism, not center-left politics. They're pretty firm in right-wing territory, including the obligatory hate against homosexuals and women's rights. Add gun crazies, religious zealots and Birchers and you'd have the GOP*.
*I'll refrain from making the obvious "Remove gun crazies, religious zealots and Birchers from the GOP and you're left with nothing" joke. Well, maybe not.
Re:Typical (Score:5, Informative)
In this case, the Tasmanian Liberals [liberal.org.au] are more or less similar to those American 'Conservatives' who are still pretending to endorse the 'compassionate conservative' label.
Note key phrases such as "We believe in the importance of the family and that the standards of a free society should support family ideals.", "We further believe government should not compete with an efficient private sector", "We believe that Australia has a constructive role to play in maintaining international peace in alliance with other free nations", and "We further believe that competitive enterprise, the free choice of consumers in the marketplace and individual effort will maximise economic growth and national prosperity.".
You'd need a local observer to say to what degree these reflect genuine classical 'Liberalism', in something resembling the 19th century sense, and to what degree they reflect the rhetorical coating of a group of privatization-crazed crony capitalists with strong ties to local extraction industries and an enthusiasm for foreign policy adventurism; but these are not the 'liberals' in the American sense of the term...
Re:Get this guy out of politics (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, a non-biased observer would consider Obama even-tempered in the face of criticism to an unusual degree. Certainly doesn't have the kind of vitriolic defensiveness his predecessor had.
That has never been true anywhere (Score:2, Informative)
The terms stem from the french parliament where progressives used to sit on the left side and "conservatives" on the right side. These days there are no universal definitions of what are left and right wing and the terms are even more meaningless if we look at economic politics. For example, both socialists and anarchists are considered left wing, though their views on the desired economic system are like night and day. I think that most widely agreed definitions base "left-wing" on some form of social justice and equality and right-wing on being conservative (both economic and social conservatism). That's not 100% perfect but it's pretty much as good as can be expect for such simple terms.
I'm not aware of any point in history or any location on earth, in which the terms would have referred solely on economic principles and not on the whole parties/social movements/etc...
Re:This guy's a liberal? (Score:3, Informative)
Confusingly yanks use the term "liberal" in a different way to the rest of the world. Liberalism in the rest of the world means small government, and "hands off". In Australia the "Liberal Party" is actually conservative. The Labor Party are centre-right. And the Greens manage to be the only major left-wing party. But give them power and they'll get corrupted as well.
This is because the US founding fathers espoused Liberal (big L) beliefs, touting small government and personal freedoms. Therefore, US "conservatives" want a conservative reading of the founding documents (Constitution, federalist papers, et al) and a conservative application of laws and government (as little as necessary), while US "liberals" want a liberal reading of founding documents (allowing for things like abuse of the interstate commerce clause) and liberal application of government solutions (as much as the tax base can bear).
The rest of the former British Empire slowly changed from monarchy to democracy, so "conservative" to them means a return to autocracy, whereas "liberal" means personal freedom. It gets confusing discussing politics on the Internet as a result, so remember to use more than titles (R/D/Con/Lib).