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Projecting optimism, WA Premier Colin Barnett helped in a charity fundraiser, the World's Greatest Shave, on Sunday.

West Australian Liberal Premier Colin Barnett says he is still in the game to win this Saturday's election, despite a new poll giving Labor an 11 per cent swing, enough to give it victory.

Mr Barnett said there werestill a large number of undecided voters which he put as high as one in five and, as a result, the Liberals were "still in this game".

"We are still in it," the Premier said.

Campaigning in Perth's working-class eastern suburbs on Sunday, Mr Barnett shook off suggestions it might have been wiser to concentrate his efforts in the city's northern suburbs to sandbag seats under threat from a barnstorming Labor.

A Galaxy poll published in The Sunday Times puts Labor ahead of the Liberals 54 to 46 per cent on a two party preferred basis. If uniform, it would deliver Labor 14 seats, more than the 10 it neededto seal victory on Saturday.

Mr Barnett said he was disappointed by the Galaxy poll result but, with plenty of chutzpah, he said the Liberals even had a strong chance for the seat of Midland, won by Labor by just 24 votes in 2013.

"[Liberal candidate Daniel Parasiliti] is running a fantastic campaign in Midland," Mr Barnett said.

"I reckon there'll be 12 people out there who will change and vote for you, Daniel, so he has a really strong chance."

Despite several polls pointing to a Labor victory, many analysts are unwilling to call the election because of the increasing number of voters who will choose minor parties, makingdetermining preference flows more difficult. Veteran political analyst David Black said it is the most difficult election to call in nearly 50 years.

Pauline Hanson will spend the week campaigning in Western Australiaand willtargetregional areas and seats on the Perth'sfringe.

The Liberalspreference deal with One Nation where One Nation will preference the Liberals ahead of Labor in the lower house has come at a cost, as two One Nation candidates vehemently opposed to the deal weredisendorsed while another quit over the issue last week.

Polls also suggest support for One Nation is not as high as it is in Queensland, with the Galaxy poll putting theparty's primary vote in WA at 9 per cent whileFairfax's ReachTEL pollput it at 8.5 per cent.

Mr Barnett said he had no regrets over the preference deal.

"That was an arrangement done by the Liberal Party," he said. "I support the decision they took. It doesn't in any way mean I support One Nation candidates or One Nation policies.

"The public of Western Australia is not fascinated by One Nation and preferences,they are not. They are interested in who will be their local member of parliament."

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten is expected to campaign in Perth this week, following on the heels of former prime minister Bob Hawke who campaigned in Perth over the weekend.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, whose first and only campaign visit a fortnight ago fell flat over a GST blunder,will not return to WA before Saturday's election.

Read more:
WA election: Colin Barnett says the Liberals can still win as polls tip a Labor victory - The Australian Financial Review

By Jennifer Burns By Jennifer Burns March 3

Jennifer Burns is an Associate Professor of History at Stanford University and a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Ayn Rand is dead. Its been 35 years since hundreds of mourners filed by her coffin (fittingly accompanied by a dollar-sign-shaped flower arrangement), but it has been only four months since she truly died as a force in American politics. Yes, there was aflurryofarticles identifyingRand lovers in the Trump administration, including Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo; yes, Ivanka Trumptweetedaninaccurate Rand quotein mid-February. But the effort to fix a recognizable right-wing ideology on President Trump only obscures the more significant long-term trends that the election of 2016 laid bare.However much Trump seems like the Rand hero par excellence a wealthy man with a fiery belief in, well, himself his victory signals the exhaustion of the Republican Partys romance with Rand.

In electing Trump, the Republican base rejected laissez-faire economics in favor of economic nationalism. Full-fledged objectivism, the philosophy Rand invented, is an atheistic creed that calls for pure capitalism and a bare-bones government with no social spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security or Medicare. Itsnever appeared on the national political scene without significant dilution. But there was plenty of diluted Rand on offer throughout the primary season: Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz all espoused traditional Republican nostrums about reducing the role of government to unleash American prosperity.

Yetnone of this could match Trumps full-throated roar to build a wallor his protectionist plans for American trade. In the general election,Trumpsought outnew voters and independents using arguments traditionally associated with Democrats: deploying the power of the state to protect workers and guarantee their livelihoods, even at the cost of trade agreements and long-standing international alliances. Trumps economic promises electrifiedruralworking-class voters the same way Bernie Sanders excited urban socialists.Where Rands influence has stood for years on the right for a hands-off approach to the economy,Trumps America first platformcontradicts this premise by assuming that government policies can and should deliberately shape economic growth, up to and includingpunishing specific corporations. Likewise, his promise to craft trade policy in support of the American worker is the exact opposite of Rands proclamation that the essence of capitalisms foreign policy is free trade.

And theres little hope that Trumps closest confidants will reverse his decidedly anti-Randian course. Theconservative Republicanswhocame to powerwith Trumpin an almost accidental processmay findthey have to exchange certain ideals to stay close to him. True, Paul Ryan and Mike Pence have been able to breathe new life into Republican economic and social orthodoxies. For instance, in a nod to Pences religious conservatism, Trump shows signs ofreversing his earlier friendlinessto gay rights. And his opposition to Obamacare dovetails with Ryans long-held ambitions to shrink federal spending. Even so, there is little evidence that either Pence or Ryan would have survived a Republican primary battle against Trump or fared well in a national election; their fortunes are dependent on Trumps. And the president won by showing that the Republican base and swing voters have moved on from the traditional conservatism of Reagan and Rand.

What is rising on the right is not Randian fear of government but something far darker. It used to be that bright young things likeStephen Miller, Trumps controversial White House aide, came up on Rand. In the 1960s, she inspired a rump movement of young conservatives determined to subvert the GOP establishment, drawing in future bigwigs such as Alan Greenspan. Her admirers were powerfully attracted to the insurgent presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater, whom Rand publicly supported. They swooned when she talked about the ethics of capitalism, delegitimizing programs like Medicare and Medicaid as immoral. They thrilled to her attack on the draft and other conservative pieties. At national conferences, they asked each other, Who is John Galt? (a reference to her novel Atlas Shrugged) and waved the black flag of anarchism, modified with a gold dollar sign.

Over time, most conservatives who stayed in politics outgrew these juvenile provocations or disavowed them. For example, Ryan moved swiftly toreplace Rand with Thomas Aquinaswhen he was nominated in 2012 for vice president, claiming that the Catholic thinker was his primary inspiration (although it was copies of Atlas Shrugged, not Summa Theologiae, that he handed out to staffers). But former Randites retained her fiery hatred of government and planted it within the mainstream GOP. And it was Rand who had kindled their passions in the first place, making her the starting point for a generation of conservatives.

Now Rand is on the shelf, gathering dust with F.A. Hayek, Edmund Burke and otheronce-prominentconservative luminaries. Its no longer possible to provoke the elders by going on about John Galt. Indeed, many of the elders have by now used Randian references to name theiryachts,investment companiesandfoundations.

Instead, young insurgent conservatives talk about race realism,argue that manipulated crime statisticsmask growing social disorderand cast feminism as aplot against men. Instead of reading Rand, they take the red pill, indulging in an emergent internet counter-culture that reveals the principles of liberalism rights, equality, tolerance to be dangerous myths. BeyondBreitbart.com, ideological energy on the right now courses through tiny blogs and websites of the Dark Enlightenment, the latter-day equivalent of RandsObjectivist Newsletterand the many libertarian zines she inspired.

Once upon a time, professors tut-tutted when Rand spoke to overflow crowds on college campuses, where she lambasted left and right alike and claimed, improbably, that big business wasAmericas persecuted minority. She delighted in skewering liberal audience members and occasionally turned her scorn on questioners. But this was soft stuff compared with the insults handed out by Milo Yiannopoulosand the uproar that has greeted his appearances.Rand may have accused liberals of having a lust for power, but she never would have called Holocaust humor a harmless search for lulz, as Yiannopoulos gleefully does.

Indeed, the new ideas on the right have moved away from classical liberalism altogether. American conservatives have always had a mixed reaction to the Western philosophical tradition that emphasizes the sanctity of the individual. Religious conservatives, in particular, often struggle with Rand because her extreme embrace of individualism leaves little room for God, country, duty or faith. But Trump represents a victory for a form of conservatism that is openly illiberal and willing to junk entirely the traditional rhetoric of individualism and free markets for nationalism inflected with racism, misogyny and xenophobia.

Mixed in with Rands vituperative attacks on government was a defense of the individuals rights in the face of a powerful state. This single-minded focus could yield surprising alignments, such as Rands opposition to drug laws and her support of legal abortion. And although liberals have always loved to hate her, over the next four years, they may come to miss herdefense of individual autonomy and liberty. Ayn Rand is dead.Long live Ayn Rand!

See the original post:
Ayn Rand is dead. Liberals are going to miss her. - Washington Post

The photograph that started the gleefully stupid This is the future that liberals want meme.CreditPHOTOGRAPH BOUBAH360 / INSTAGRAM

In 1999, John Rocker, a beefy young relief pitcher for the Atlanta Braves, explained toSports Illustratedwhy hednever want to play baseball in New York. Imagine having to take the [Number] 7 train to the ballpark, looking like youre [riding through] Beirut next to some kid with purple hair next to some queer with AIDS right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids, he said. Its depressing. Thetabloids raged, local politicians condemned the remarks, and Major League Baseball suspended him for the first few months of the coming season. Rockers comments spurred New Yorkers to do a rare thing: praise the subway, in this case, the 7 train, with its especially diverse ridership, holding it up as an emblem of city pride.

This week, the New York subway featured in a similar skirmish in the culture wars, when a Twitter userre-posted a photographof a drag queen sitting on the train next to a woman in a niqab, with the caption, This is the future that liberals want. As with Rockers comments, the framing of a subway tableau as some kind of debased and terrifying dystopia was met with widespread derision. Part of the response was urgent and earnestanother assertion of cosmopolitan values during a time of ascendant reactionary politics. Twitter users pointed out that the sight of two very different-looking people riding the train was neither remarkable nor futuristicsuch things happen every day, right now. BuzzFeed tracked down Gilda Wabbit, the drag queen in the photo,who said, I wont speak for all liberals, but my goal is for everyone . . . to be able to exist as they choose without judgment or fear.

Mostly, though, liberals just laughed, and, for arare moment in the era of President Trump, they laughed at themselvesappropriating the offending tweet as a self-reflexive meme that mocked the original poster and liberal culture in equal measure. Users posted an array of photosPower Rangers, Care Bears, the animated eco-warriors of Captain Planet, the Young Pope, all manner of cute animals, Justin Trudeauas other visions of the long dreamed-of progressive future. As the meme spread, it devolved into near meaningless: people are now posting photos of just about anything with the phrase attached. It has become the first Thanks, Obama or Benghazi joke of the Trump eraan ironic repurposing of conservative outrage that is defused and made ridiculous.

The threats posed by Trumpism, of course, are seriousand one of Trumpisms central themes is an ever-narrowing conception of what it means to be an American, what it means to belong, who gets to be counted as us and who as other. To this end, the original tweet is exactly the kind of thing that deserves serious refutation. But one of the offshoots of the rise of Trump has been to rob many liberals of their sense of humor. To pay close attention to the news is to trap oneself in a daily cycle of outrage, self-righteousness, a pained recognition of the inelegance of that self-righteousness, and, finally, a feeling of futility. Part of what made the Womens March so powerful was its scenes of comedy, not simply the signs that mocked the President, but those that recognized the joyousness in the very of act of protest.

A classic strategy of the school bully is to make his enemies look, in comparison, like uptight weenies. Every time that Trump rages about fake news, people are compelled to respond with some form of, No, actually, reporting is real, and facts are important and essential to the functioning of democracy. Its a necessary response, but, on style points, the class clown always beats the teachers pet.

Sometimes, the nonsense campaign of Trump and his most fervent supporters must be recognized as such and ignored, or else, as in this case, mocked and hijacked in a new and better direction. This is the future that liberals want was a stupid thing to say, and the meme it spawned is stupid, toobut its a gleeful, exuberant kind of stupidity, and, in a small way, it has provided a moment of release. Constant vigilant outrage is not only exhausting, and eventually deflating, but its ill suited to liberal culture, which is suffused with a healthy dose of self-awareness, self-mockery, and even self-loathing. Theres a reason why conservatives control talk radio, with all its grim certitude, and liberals run comedy, which is characterized by, among others things, ambivalence. As Woody Allen, in Annie Hall, said, Dont you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like were left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes, and I live here. Donald Trump, meanwhile, is said to find nothing about himself funny at all. That, as much as anything else, is worth resisting.

See original here:
This Is the Future That Liberals Want Is the Joke That Liberals Need - The New Yorker

Spanish liberals have met with officials from Emmanuel Macrons movement in France to offer support in an election that will shape the future of the European Union, party leader Albert Rivera said.

We mutually recognize our roles in Southern Europe, Rivera, head of Ciudadanos, said in an interview in the Spanish parliament in Madrid Thursday. We are willing to cooperate, help, support and whatever is needed from the political point of view. Europe not just France is at stake.

Rivera led Ciudadanos into the Spanish parliament for the first time in 2015, opening a centrist space between the countrys two traditional parties by proposing a mixture of free-market reforms and controls on political corruption. Macron faces a similar challenge in France, where the Socialists and the center-right have dominated presidential elections since the start of the fifth republic in 1958.

With the French establishment set to be swept aside in this years election, polls show Macron is just behind anti-euro candidate Marine Le Pen for the first round on April 23 and that he would easily beat her in the May 7 run-off.

France, as the heart of the Europe , is the center of the most importantpolitical battle in coming years, Rivera said. Its not the same having a presidentin the Elysee who is liberal, progressive, modern and pro-European. Or Le Pen who is calling for an exit referendum.

Macron, 39, is pledging to cut costs and bureaucracy to boost hiring, and promote investment in what he called the economy of the future. He plans to raise take-home pay through reductions in payroll taxes, unify Frances disparate pension systems and encourage labor negotiations at the company level, without raising the retirement age or cutting pensions.

Macron and his party stand by most of what the Liberal Democrats stand for, said Rivera, whose Ciudadanos party is part of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, the third largest group in the European Parliament. We would be very happy to have Macron as a companion in the Liberal Democrat group.

Victory for Le Pens protectionist agenda could have serious consequences for Spain as France is its biggest trade partner, according to the Spanish National Statistics Institute, with almost 32 billion euros ($34 billion) of exports in the first ten months of 2016, twice the sales to U.K.

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We already have Brexit, so its key that France gives a different signal, said Rivera, whose party has drawn up a plan to attract high-skilled workers from the U.S. and the U.K. as their governments take protectionist measures. As Macron said, if Trump is closing the U.S. door, and May wants to expel professionals, open-minded countries like Spain or France have to open the door to that talent.

Ciudadanos reached a deal with the governing Peoples Party in October to allow Mariano Rajoy to take office for a second term in Spain following a 10-month impasse. Rivera opted to stay out of the government, having seen U.K. liberal Nick Cleggs political career derailed by a coalition with David Cameron.

Read the original:
Spanish Liberals Offer Support to Macron in Battle for Europe - Bloomberg

Slide: 1 / of 1. Caption: Boubah Barry

Samuel Themer never planned to be a symbol of everything thats right or wrong with America. He just wanted to go to work. But when he hopped on the subwayto head into Manhattan on February 19, the Queens resident was in full draghe performs as Gilda Wabbit. He also ended up sittingnext to a woman in a niqab, a fact he initially didnt even notice. I was just sitting on the train, existing, he says. It didnt seem out of the ordinary that a woman in full modesty garb would sit next to me.

Someone on that W car with them, though, thought otherwise.Boubah Barry, aGuinean immigrant and real estate student, wanted to document what he saw as a testament to tolerance, so he took a photo of the pair andpostedit to Instagram. Its diversity, says Barry, who says he doesnt identify as liberal or conservative but does oppose President Trumps refugee ban. They sit next to each other, and no one cares.

But someone did care. After the post was shared by Instagram account subwaycreatures, the photo driftedacross the internet until /pol/ News Network attached it to a tweet on Wednesday with the message This is the future that liberals want.

/pol/ News Network, which also recently declaredGet Outto be anti-white propaganda,probably intended the post to be a warning about the impending liberal dystopia. But as soon as actual liberals saw it, they flipped the message on its headand began touting the message as exactly the future they wanted. They filled /pol/ News Networks mentions with messages endorsing the photo and adding their own visions of a bright future. By Thursday, it was a full-blown meme. Soon images of a future filled with interspecies companionship, gay space communism, and Garfield flooded onto social media.

As one of the people at the center of the meme, Themer is happy to be a symbol of the far-rightsfear of an inclusive futureand part of the online communitys response to it. I absolutely believe its the future I want, says Themer. I want it to not be a big deal that we sat next to each other, were just being ourselves.

But he also recognizes the danger of using a meme to reinforce an echo chamber, no matter the political bent. The perspectives that are being illustrated by this imageit worries me that the divide is so deep, he says. I dont like when its used just as simple confirmation bias. When two groups use the same image to prove their critiques of the other, it fosters prejudice, rather than conversation. Themer would rather the image prompt a dialogue across the political chasm and get people to see themselves in Barrys photo.

If we can come to have empathy for each other, we can come to a place where we can find common ground and move forward, he says. Thats the goal.

The backlash against the /pol/ News Networks post is a rare display ofa memesredemptive powerits abilityto flip a bigoted statement into one of optimism. Liberal voices have co-opted the image as a way to create a utopian vision lit by the rosy glow of President Beyonc, Never Nude Syndrome, and lots of dogs.

But empathy? Thats a tall order for the internet in 2017. Still, if an opera-singing drag queen from Kentucky, a woman in a niqab, and a Guinean immigrant can come together and coexist peacefully on the W train, it just might be possible for the rest of us.

Read more:
The Story Behind That 'Future That Liberals Want' Photo - WIRED