This isn’t racist, Islamophobia or cruel. It’s commonsense

Warren Mundine is chair of the Prime Minister’s indigenous Advisory Council and a former ALP national president. (Pic: News Corp)

Donald Trump’s victory demonstrates the media and commentariat are disconnected from voters. Almost without exception they failed to anticipate the presidential election outcome — and had little influence on it. Their message that Trump was unfit for presidency largely ignored.

Australia’s political media and commentariat are also out of touch. Listening to them you’d think Australians are preoccupied with gay marriage, offshore detention, carbon emissions and identity politics. Most are preoccupied with their families, their homes, their jobs, the monthly bills and their kids’ education and job prospects.
They care about the economy and national debt. They want to live in a safe society where Australia’s way of life is valued and respected.
There’s a growing disconnect between the views expressed by the media and commentariat and those of many Australians, with commonsense often dismissed as extreme, ill-informed, even bigoted. Here are some examples.
Our biggest education challenge is performance declining against global benchmarks. Demanding more education funding as the solution is misconceived. It’s been happening despite substantial education funding increases. Something’s wrong. Australian schools should be the best in the world, not 28th behind Kazakhstan.
Meanwhile, the education issue dominating political news has been the Safe Schools controversy. It’s understandable why parents are concerned. Some content in Safe Schools and other school programs, frankly, beggars belief.
Teachers shouldn’t be schooling children in gender fluidity or asking them to imagine or role-play different sexual orientations, or teaching them about exotic sex acts, or criticising “heteronormativity”.
Governments should shut this nonsense down and focus on improving academic performance.
That’s not homophobic. It’s commonsense.
The world has more than 60 million refugees, around three times Australia’s population, with many others desperate to move to Western nations for economic opportunity.
Allowing people to stay in Australia if they make it to our shores Hunger-Games style (or acquiescing when they do) is cruel and irresponsible.
During the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd era more than 1000 people drowned and detainee numbers skyrocketed from less than 500 to more than 10,000.
Refusing to settle asylum seekers in Australia who arrive by boat is tough and unrelenting but it saves lives.
Nations must uphold their borders to maintain their sovereignty, potentially their survival. My ancestors learned this the hard way. Border security isn’t racist or an embarrassment. It’s commonsense.
Australians have a strong record of embracing immigrants in their communities and in their families, and most immigrants embrace Australia and our way of life.

But at the moment Australians are seeing something we’ve rarely seen before.
A small minority of Muslim migrants and/or their descendants reject our way of life and instead want us to embrace aspects of theirs which go against our laws, customs and culture — women covering their faces, refusing to stand in court, Sharia law regulating divorces, polygamy and even forced child “marriages”.
A smaller minority support terrorist causes and are plotting to kill us. That’s not acceptable to most Australians, including most Arab and Muslim Australians. Yes, it’s only a tiny minority but their attitudes and actions are divisive and dangerous and must be acknowledged and confronted.
Every Australian should treat others with decency, follow our laws and institutions. This isn’t racist or Islamophobic. It’s commonsense.

President-elect Donald Trump. They didn’t think he could do it. Oh, how wrong they were. (Pic: Scott Olson/Getty/AFP)

People of all societies through the ages were expected to contribute. Families and charities supported those who couldn’t. Modern Western governments introduced welfare to help people on hard times get back on their feet, not provide an optional life pathway. Governments shouldn’t pay people who refuse to work. If there are jobs picking fruit, selling hamburgers, labouring or cleaning, unemployed people should do them or lose benefits.
I hope the federal government’s welfare reform plans go beyond tough talk and become tough action. Making people take available work isn’t cruel. Sit-down money is cruel. Welfare reform is commonsense.
Politicians who articulate these kinds of opinions are often branded heartless and bigoted by the progressive/Left, cheered on by prominent members of the political media and commentariat.
It’s rare to hear centrist politicians speak as bluntly as I just have. Centrist Labor tends to pander to the progressive/Left. Centrist Liberals tiptoe. In doing so they leave a vacuum for extremists and populists.
Trump, Brexit and One Nation’s resurgence deliver two key lessons.
First, politicians who speak directly to voters about what voters care about can prevail, regardless of the media and commentariat.
Second, if centrists are unwilling or afraid to embrace commonsense views, voters will turn to extremists and populists, however offensive.
The first centrist politician who embraces commonsense with plain-speaking, ignoring the political class and dealing honestly and firmly with issues Australians care about, will dominate the ballot box.
Warren Mundine is chair of the Prime Minister’s indigenous Advisory Council and a former ALP national president


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Taken from: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/rendezview/this-isnt-racist-islamophobia-or-cruel-its-commonsense/news-story/31f2cf932163b4e90974f459f077462f

Magi, Gentiles or Jews?

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, ‘Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him’.

 

Matthew 2:1-2

 

 

Just because they were “from the east” does not necessarily mean that the Magi had hailed from the Far East (Persia, India, China), because Job himself, who was a Naphtalian Israelite:

 

Job's Life and Times

 

https://www.academia.edu/3787850/Jobs_Life_and_Times

 

(hence a non-Gentile), from Transjordanian Bashan, “was the greatest man among all the people of the east” (Job 1:3).

In Part One of this series:

https://www.academia.edu/26423097/Bible_Critics_Can_Overstate_Idea_of_Enlightened_Pagan I tentatively listed the Magi amongst various biblical candidates generally considered to have been Gentiles, writing as follows:  

 

Here it will be argued that - contrary to what is often believed about the following biblical characters - none of these can really accurately be designated as an ‘enlightened pagan’:

 

1.      MELCHIZEDEK

2.      RAHAB (in genealogy of David and Jesus)

3.      RUTH

4.      ACHIOR (in my Catholic Bible, Book of Judith)

5.      JOB

6.      (Probably also) the Magi.

 

And later I noted briefly:

 

6.      THE MAGI. There is some tradition that has them descending from the family of Job. I would suspect that the “east” in which the Magi dwelt was, not Persia by any means, but the same approximate “east” wherein Job dwelt, in the land of Uz, in Transjordanian Bashan. …. 

 

Now, I have come across an article by David C. Sim, entitled The magi: Gentiles or Jews? http://www.hts.org.za/index.php/HTS/article/viewFile/1660/2952), which opens the door to the possibility that the Magi may have been Jews.

Sim’s Abstract for his article reads as follows:

 

From the second century onwards the Christian tradition has almost without exception accepted that the magi in Matthew's infancy narrative were Gentiles, and this view also completely dominates modern Matthean studies. Yet this identification of the magi as Gentiles is built upon a number of unconvincing arguments, which fail to stand up to closer scrutiny. A re-assessment of the evidence reveals that the evangelist did not stipulate the racial origins of the magi. They may have been Gentiles, but it is equally plausible that they were Jews.

 

After proceeding through the usual “seven arguments” raised by scholars in favour of a Gentile ethnicity for the Magi, Sim concludes his article by writing:

 

The preceding discussion has attempted to show that not one of the seven arguments produced by scholars to prove that the magi of Matthew 2:1-12 were Gentiles has any validity. Much of the evidence is in fact ambiguous and can apply just as much to the Jews as to the Gentiles. Despite scholarly claims to the contrary, there were Jewish magi and/or Jewish astrologers who lived to the east of the Jewish homeland, and there were Jews who used the expression "the King of the Jews". The fact that the magi appear not to have known the prophecies concerning the birth-place of the messiah need not necessarily identify them as Gentiles. As the Treatise of Shem demonstrates, it is quite unreasonable to expect Jews who devoted themselves to astrology and other esoteric arts to be experts as well in scriptural exegesis. The arguments concerning the fulfilment of certain Old Testament prophecies, the star of Balaam in Numbers 24: 17 and the pilgrimage of the nations to Zion in Isaiah 60 and Psalm 72, simply cannot be sustained in view of the absence of formula quotations. Moreover, the claim that Matthew has modelled the magi on the Gentile Balaam is rather incredible, given the universal condemnation of this figure in both Jewish and Christian sources. The final argument, that in this narrative the evangelist establishes a dichotomy between believing Gentiles and unbelieving Jews that is reflected throughout the Gospel, is based upon an incorrect assessment of Matthew's view of both the Gentiles and the Jews.

What conclusions should we draw from this discussion? The first thing to be said is that it would exceed the evidence to suggest that Matthew did not intend the magi to be taken as Gentiles. While none of the seven arguments usually offered in support of this hypothesis is convincing, it must be said that there is no definitive evidence which proves

that they could not be Gentiles. This a small and insignificant victory, however. Precisely

the same can be said of the alternative hypothesis that the evangelist depicted the magi as

Jews. The information Matthew provides about these figures is completely consistent with the thesis that they were Jewish astrologers, but nothing in the story explicitly identifies them as Jews and not as Gentiles. The reality of the situation is that the evangelist did not make clear the racial origins of the magi. We have to presume that Matthew assumed this knowledge on the part of his readers. Unfortunately we modern readers are not privy to this information, so we are faced with a choice between the two alternatives.

The very uncertainty of the evidence does, however, have an important consequence. As noted above, scholars make considerable use of the (Gentile) magi in developing an argument for Matthew's positive view of the Gentile world and for substantiating the  evangelist's universalistic perspective; it is in fact one of the main pillars on which these

theses are built. If, however, the certainty is removed and the Gentile nature of the magi

becomes a possibility to be considered alongside the equally plausible possibility that they were Jews, then these hypotheses are dealt a significant blow. From now on scholars must attempt to build their case without any reference to the magi in the Matthean infancy narrative.