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HOBART, Australia Until four months ago few leaders seemed more influenced even inspired by President Trumps worldview than Australias prime minister, Scott Morrison.

Mr. Morrisons government was climate-denying, globalism-bashing and displayed an increasingly authoritarian bent. His rhetoric, even if it lacked the sriracha of Trumpetry, riffed on Trumpian themes.

And given a good crisis, Mr. Morrisons administration seemed as determined as the White House to miss no opportunity to make matters worse as it did with its grossly inept response to Australias summer of apocalyptic wild fires.

Having seen this almost impossibly low bar set for government action, many Australians have felt relief tinged with astonishment knowing that their country is today among the worlds most successful in dealing with the coronavirus epidemic. By some measures, it nearly rivals South Korea and has done better than Singapore and Germany.

As of Monday morning, Australia, with its 25.5 million people, had recorded a total of 7,054 infections and 99 deaths, according to Worldometers. Thats 277 infections and four deaths for every million people. In the United States, the per capita figures were 4,619 infections and 275 deaths per million by Monday; in Britain, 3,592 infections and 511 deaths per million.

What happened?

According to Mr. Morrisons treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, the former prime minister John Howard, the eminence grise of Australian conservatism and its many culture wars, counseled Mr. Morrison and Mr. Frydenberg that theres no ideological constraints at times like this. Mr. Frydenberg added, Thats the advice we have taken. Mr. Morrison went so far as to declare: Today is not about ideologies. We checked those at the door.

Mr. Howard spoke from experience. A fiercely right-wing prime minister, when confronted in 1996 with the horror of 35 people being shot dead at Port Arthur, in Tasmania, he moved decisively to enact strong gun-control laws. No mass shootings occurred in the next 20 years, according to a 2016 report, and the decline in firearm deaths accelerated. There have been only two mass shootings since, one of seven people and one of four.

Following Mr. Morrisons own Damascene moment, things once deemed fantastical became commonplace. Scientists, whom Mr. Morrisons party has derided for over a decade, were respectfully asked for their views about the novel coronavirus and, more remarkable still, these views were acted on and amplified. Mr. Morrison dismissed the idea of trying to build herd immunity among the population, calling it a death sentence.

A national cabinet was formed in which the states premiers (the equivalent of governors) from both the left and the right regularly met by video to plot the course of the nation through the crisis. In this way and others, a government that has been sectarian and divisive became inclusive.

The stimulus plan was designed after negotiations with various civil society groups, including the trade unions. There are no blue teams or red teams, Mr. Morrison said in early April. There are no more unions or bosses. There are just Australians now; thats all that matters.

He thanked Sally McManus, the first woman to head Australias trade union movement a socialist and feminist, a bte noire of the right and to the left of the Labor Party mainstream, Ms. McManus is an activist who allies her politics with the likes of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn.

It was a moment of grace, and as surreal as if Mr. Trump sought the counsel of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and then praised her.

As a consequence of the stimulus, the Australian economy is not expected to plumb the catastrophic depths foreseen for the United States or Europe. The unemployment rate rose to 6.2 percent in April. The Reserve Bank of Australia has predicted that it will peak at 10 percent in June and slowly decline to 6.5 percent by June 2022. While these sad statistics hide a larger tragedy, they still are preferable to those in the United States, where unemployment hit 14.7 percent last month and, according to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, may have reached 25 percent.

Australians trust in their government has soared from record lows in December: Ninety-three percent of respondents in a recent poll by the Lowy Institute said they believed it had handled Covid-19 very or fairly well. Peter Doherty, a leading Australian immunologist and Nobel laureate who on Twitter rails against neoliberal idiocy and Mr. Trump, spoke for many Australians when he said recently that Mr. Morrison had, in dealing with the pandemic, basically done the right thing.

And yet Australias success has received little global attention.

New Zealands prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, struts the world stage, leading in scores of stories about countries that are succeeding against the coronavirus, exuding charisma, but charisma excludes Mr. Morrison, who seems condemned to watch from the wings.

Could it be that Australias record somehow embarrasses commentators of both the left and the right? The left, because the Australian government is in every other respect Trumpian in its male-led, climate-denying, nationalist tub-thumping and authoritarian sentiments; the right because a conservative government has succeeded only by very publicly abandoning ideology. And if ideology, and the culture wars, are nothing when everything is at stake, the inevitable question arises: Did they ever mean anything at all?

Now, with the beginning of a return to normalcy, the strange miracle of this Australian consensus already is starting to vanish, with old habits renascent.

Even so, these remarkable few months will remain a rebuke to the murderous madness of ruling through division, a testament of hope to all that can be achieved when ideology is ditched.

Presented with growing doubts about democracys ability to deal with the pandemic on the one hand, and the seeming ability of a totalitarian China to address the crisis on the other, Australia unexpectedly, if only briefly, returned to its best traditions of communality and fairness.

While the world searches for a vaccine for the virus, the vaccine for its coming crises not least among them climate change is perhaps hiding in plain sight: unite, listen and act with all, for all, rather than special interests. Perhaps this is the future, the only future, and not just for Australia, but for any democracy seeking to hold through this new, terrifying age.

Richard Flanagan won the Man Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North and is the author, most recently, of the novel First Person.

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Did the Coronavirus Kill Ideology in Australia? - The New York Times

Its a truism that there are at least two sides to every argument. But it does not necessarily follow that those two sides are equal either in substantive weight or public appeal.

These pages and our television screens, to say nothing of social media, are chock full of clashes over the pace of reopenings, mask mandates and all manner of issues related to this phase of the COVID public health response.

Fortunately, most of these are wars of words only, fully in keeping with our rich American tradition of free speech and public dissension. But, increasingly, words are being replaced by actions, whether in the form of restaurants defying closure orders, gun-toting protesters showing up at state capitol buildings, or unveiled Facebook threats of civil war.

Fear is powerful and pandemics across the ages have not always brought out the best in human charity and compassion. In the face of a deadly, invisible contagion, and with the best defense being to keep others at a distance, me has often triumphed over we.

Further, this response requires patience a quality that is not always a hallmark of our society.

The word most often recited in these protests, both the actual gatherings and the rhetorical grenades, is tyranny. Which the dictionary defines as cruel or oppressive government or rule.

That is such an exaggerated claim, unfounded on the merits and counterproductive as a political message.

There is no questioning on this end of the economic metrics or the individual stories of devastation. Those of us who are more comfortable and less susceptible to this upheaval need to understand the breadth of the economic loss and the depth of the personal pain.

(On that score, an acknowledgement. In a column early in this crisis, I critiqued the cure is worse than the disease line of thinking and commented that the economic rebound could be just as dramatic as the downturn. Ill have to assign that erroneous assessment to wishful thinking as there is less doubt with each passing week that it will take a good while to dig out of this economic hole. Some sectors will regain strength faster than others but the notion of a sharp, V-shaped recovery is less and less likely.)

However deep and damaging the economic consequences, the causation rests with the virus, not with government actions much less tyranny. It is the pathogen that is dictating the economic havoc. To instead, conveniently, blame the public response is wildly off the mark.

Whatever the political differences, show me one governor or mayor who wants the economy to tank and tax coffers to dry up.

Ironically and sadly, those who are making a show of violating public health orders are serving to extend the closures and shutdowns instead of cutting them short. Think, for instance, of the less-than-stellar crowd gathered close together sans masks on Mothers Day at the now-shuttered bakery in Castle Rock. Did that moment of feel-good independence and sticking-it-to-the-man lessen the spread of the virus or risk greater proliferation?

Of course, government action should be put under a microscope. That is especially true in extraordinary circumstances when such emergency response exceeds usual bounds. Not all policies have equal backing or impact. For example, mask requirements have demonstrated upside in closed, indoor places even if they are far from a total preventative. In an outdoor setting of abundant space, any benefit is quite marginal.

But, again, it is the disease that is in the drivers seat, not the decrees. Take Jared Polis completely out of the equation and I dare say that darn few of us would be sitting in a packed restaurant or movie theater or ballpark or concert hall anytime soon.

To the politics, public opinion is simply not with those on the front lines of protest and outrage. Polling in Colorado and across the country shows that even among Republicans, mask requirements and a slower approach to reopenings are favored by margins upward of two-to-one. Among Democrats and unaffiliated voters, the margins are even higher.

We are a nation perpetually and angrily divided. But on this issue at least, that divide is far from equal.

By training and instinct, reporters tend to give equivalent weight to both sides of the argument. One paragraph pro; one paragraph con. Thats fair but loses sight of indicator after indicator showing public sentiment solidly behind bold action to safeguard public health.

For further evidence, look at the political fortunes of governors of both parties who have moved aggressively on the COVID crisis versus those who have been more timid and laissez faire. Among Democratic governors, Polis has embraced cautious resumptions on a faster timeline than most of his peers.

Culture wars require culture warriors. In this case, often fanned by presidential tweets, the call has been answered by libertarian-leaning conservatives. Their conundrum is that their populist cries of tyranny lack popular resonance.

This has led to a rhetorical escalation that is more and more out of sync with a guarded and frightened public. A week ago, one Denver radio talker, seemingly reasonable and personable off-air, equated mask mandates with Holocaust-era orders for Jews to wear a yellow star on their chest. The fact that this radio personality lost ancestors to the Nazi madness, as did my family, made the analogy no less wacky and off-key.

Add to this my usual rule of politics that whichever side first reaches for the Nazi card is most often losing the argument.

With a highly contagious virus already ripping at our fabric, perhaps it is extra important to be careful with the discourse and not do more to tear ourselves apart. Instead of one more political and cultural flashpoint, might this historic challenge be a healing touchpoint?

Eric Sondermann is a Colorado-based independent political commentator. His column appears regularly on Sundays in ColoradoPolitics. Reach him atEWS@EricSondermann.com; follow him at @EricSondermann

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SONDERMANN | Blame the virus, not the government | News - coloradopolitics.com

His wife, Virginia Thomas, gets a bit of screen time, but shes totally in sync with her husbands version of history and the events in his life. If you want a 2-hour production that feels more like hagiography than what I think of as a documentary with balancing voices, then Created Equal is for you. The question is whether such a one-sided, in his own words version of the life of a figure as controversial as Thomas is what public television should be offering in prime time. The answer to that question goes straight to the heart of our culture wars. Clarence Thomas and Michael Pack, the films director and producer, bring plenty of culture war baggage with them to the table.

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If you want a one-sided, right-wing, celebratory version of the life of Clarence Thomas, PBS has just the tic - Baltimore Sun

Friday

As he recalls his origins at little Lorca and discusses his desire to work again, there is a glimpse of the old enthusiasm, absent in the autumn. And he keeps returning to the positives at Arsenal. But that goes with an inescapable sense of injustice at how he has been portrayed, dismissed as a disaster, a figure of fun. And it is hard not to linger on what went wrong.

This meeting is the perfect portrait of the Bolsonaro administration, said Bruno Boghossian, a columnist for the Folha de So Paulo newspaper in Brazils political capital, Braslia. Conspiracy theories, ideological issues, made-up battles, and culture wars all right there at the heart of government.

As with chefs, winemakers can be good or bad at their jobs. Wines can also suffer from the conditions theyve been kept in (under hot shop lights, for example) or the fact that theyve simply been kept too long: bin ends are bin ends for a reason.

Not only is this the greatest rugby union match 80 minutes of unremitting, exhilarating, rugged brilliance it also contained the most magnificent passage of play in all of TV-recorded sport: Gareth Edwardss greatest try.

A UK source described the talks as tetchy at times, with just six weeks to go before a legally binding deadline by which a decision must be made on extending the transition period beyond 2020.

He told me of an elderly man brought to an appointment by his children. They were deeply concerned, wanting him assessed for dementia. His major symptom was falling in love with a sex worker, moving her into his house, giving her money and property. The doctor reluctantly put him through rounds of rigorous tests and found absolutely nothing wrong with his cognition or psychology. He was sane, he was loved, he was happy. The doctor hooted with delight as he told me this story.

I like Tom Hanks. You like Tom Hanks. We all like Tom Hanks, the nicest guy in the movie business. Who could be so awful that Tom Hanks would have to reprimand them? Hi!

Did I introduce her to your housemates? My housemate is my ex, so while that could have been the most brilliantly awkward thing in the world, its probably best for everyone I didnt.

My most embarrassing moment? New Years Eve when I was 17. I was in a pub, underage, and my mum found out and dragged me out in front of all my friends, who were laughing at me.

They were inseparable after that first night. But at the end of the year, they had to return home Freddy to Poole in the UK and Burt to Melbourne. They agreed to come out to their friends and family, and depended on each other for support along the way. Wed call each other and tell each other how it went. It all was very emotional and very important at the time, says Fred. It was us against the world.

Tony Rolts name is written into F1s opening chapter but his story demands a broader canvas. He was a youthful prodigy, a soldier decorated for gallantry, a serial escapee in the second world war and designer and builder of the Colditz glider, a Le Mans winner and a successful engineer and businessman.

Born into the British elite, she was all set up for a life of comfort. Instead, shaken by a failed love affair, she left England when she was in her 30s, never to return. She travelled to Europe, then the Middle East, lost all her clothes in a shipwreck and started dressing as a man. She visited harems, smoked pipes, impressed the Bedouin with her horsemanship and, having discovered a mysterious map that suggested treasure was buried under the ruins of a mosque, undertook pioneering archaeological work in Palestine.

Ive done hundreds of interviews over the years and this one has touched me more than most. He should not feel ashamed. I feel certain that people are not going to see him as the loser he sometimes fears he has become. I am hopeful they will respect his courage and honesty. They will understand that, despite his vulnerability, he is trying hard to step out of the darkness that has trailed him for so long.

From her perch as speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi has bested Donald Trump in budget battles, mocked him at the State of the Union and won an outsized place in his brain. Now Molly Ball of Time magazine delivers a biography that does justice to the most powerful woman in American history: well-researched, a smooth read that goes back to the beginning.

From his early illustrations of the 1890s to the large, sun-filled canvases he made in the 1940s, she is the focus of the scene. Yet art historians have frequently emphasised the artists bad luck in landing such a difficult, sickly spouse, even suggesting she spent most of her time prone in a bathtub.

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The antidote: your favourite weekend reads beyond coronavirus - The Guardian

Its a growth industry, no doubt about it. Our cup runneth over, Brejcha, 76, says of his practice. He founded the Chicago firm 22 years ago out of his pro bono work for the anti-abortion movement.

The name Thomas More pays homage to the 16th-century martyr at the center of a celebrated church-state dispute. Brejcha (pronounced BRECK-ka) admires the saint for his humor and for what playwright Robert Bolt in an introduction to his Man for All Seasons called Mores adamantine sense of self.

As the modern-day culture wars heated up, the firms donations, from small checks to six-figure gifts, surged, tripling to $6 million between 2012 and 2018. A $137,500 deficit in 2017 turned into a $539,365 surplus. The firm does all its work pro bono.

The firm represents Beloved Church in the northwestern Illinois hamlet of Lena, which continues to hold services in defiance of Gov. J.B. Pritzker's stay-home order and a federal judge's denial of its request for a temporary restraining order. Pastor Stephen Cassell says the Thomas More Society was the one conservative legal group, among more than a dozen he contacted, that followed up.

"If it wasn't for them we wouldn't be in this fight," Cassell says.

The Thomas More Society has about a dozen lawyers total, on staff here and in Omaha, Neb., and another 15 to 20 on contract across the country paid by the hour. It hires other lawyers on a case-by-case basis.

Brejcha says his main challenge is finding enough lawyers to handle the firms workload. In 2018 his firm paid nearly $1 million to attorneys. (Brejcha got nearly $200,000, according to regulatory filings.)

His career was propelled by a racketeering lawsuit filed in 1986 by the National Organization for Women alleging a conspiracy to deny women the right to an abortion. Brejcha represented defendant Joseph Scheidler and his Pro-Life Action League; they ultimately prevailed, in 2014, on a third appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The publicity attracted other clients under religious-freedom banners. Issues ran the gamut, from same-sex marriage, insurance mandates, embryonic stem cell research, nativity scenes and transgender bathroom disputes, to abortion clinic protests and nuns complaining about a suburban strip club neighbor.

As public opinion on same-sex marriage flipped over the last decade, Brejcha hasnt. I dont think anybodys going to rewrite the Bible, he says.

"He is without question dogmatic, absolutely rigid, stultified, which he probably sees as a virtue," says Chicagoan Fay Clayton, NOW's lead counsel, along with the Southern Poverty Law Center, in the Scheidler case. She credits him with getting skillful lawyers to volunteer for the case.Ed Yohnka of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois says, They have this very twisted view of the First Amendmentthat religious liberty requires government policies to adhere to their religious beliefs.

The firms highest-profile client in pending criminal and civil cases is probably David Daleiden, an anti-abortion activist who posed as a researcher and secretly filmed Planned Parenthood officials discussing fees for sale of fetal tissue and organs. In one of the civil cases, a federal jury in San Francisco last November awarded $2.2 million to Planned Parenthood, which maintains it may arrange for tissue donations at the request of patients but not sales. The verdict is on appeal.In California Superior Court, Daleiden and another defendant are awaiting trial on nine felony counts alleging eavesdropping and invasion of privacy.

Brejcha says his work isn't one-dimensional, pointing to his defense of antiwar demonstrators and backing from the likes of the brothers Philip and Daniel Berrigan, activist priests who led 60s antiwar protests, and co-counsel assistance from late Attorney General Ramsey Clark. We had support from the left for what Dr. King called peaceable nonviolent direct action.

Periodically imprisoned Chicago activist Kathy Kelly relied on Brejcha two decades ago when charged with violating U.S. sanctions against Iraq, the result of her humanitarian aid missions. Hes always struck me as somebody whos remarkably selfless, she says.

After growing up on the South Side and graduating from the University of Notre Dame, Brejcha attended New York University School of Law, where he was on the law review with Rudy Giuliani (they havent kept in touch). An Army captain in Vietnam, he got a medal for helping plan the 1970 invasion of Cambodia. The operation rekindled campus unrest, triggering student massacres at Kent State and Jackson State universities.

Returning home, Brejcha gravitated to a litigation firm that had a name partner in the news: Barnabus Sears, a special prosecutor in an obstruction-of-justice case against Cook County States Attorney Edward Hanrahan and 13 others for their roles in the 1969 killing of two Black Panthers leaders.

When his work with Scheidler and other pro bono clients ate up too much time for too little income, Brejcha left to start Thomas More. He tapped Scheidlers mailing lists to raise money and Scheidler's wife, Ann, to chair the board.

Brejcha, in a politically ecumenical way, says Thomas More the saint would be appalled if he walked the earth today.

The way the First Amendment has been pushed aside I think it would be shocking to him. Youre allowed to patronize liquor stores, but you cant get into church, he says before broadening his complaint. There used to be a common core consensus thats turned into hard line divisionsthats regrettable . . . very, very sad. I dont know if were going to restore the center. I hope democracy has a future.

As for President Donald Trump, Thats a tough one. I dont think the president is immune from what Im talking about. Brejcha says he's guided by a favorite saying of Sears': "Who you are shouts so loud I can't hear what you're saying."

During the coronavirus crisis, Brejcha is taking long walks with his wife, Deborah, and reading. On his list is Fatal Discord, a history of Western civilizations bedrock culture war, the 16th-century schism between Luther's Reformation and humanism espoused by Erasmus.

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Chicago-based Thomas More Society busy with religion-oriented cases - Crain's Chicago Business