After 20 years of blissful ignorance, underpinned by political deceit, a growing number of Australians are beginning to realise they have been blind-sided by post-war authoritarians more interested in advancing power over them than in a better future for them and their families.

Concentrating on immediate domestic issues, most paid scant attention to things they considered beyond their ken. It has made them easy prey for ruling elites who exploited this preoccupation with platitudes and undeliverable promises.

Despite this, some are now realising their lives and those of their families are going backwards. How right they are. Inequality is at a level not seen since the post-war 1950s when governments were smaller, there was less regulation, real market-based competition and more innovation. Mobility between wealth classes was easier and less subject to political constraints.

For three decades the post-war gap closed significantly and stopped in 1980. It is now back to 1950 levels. This despite endless government promises of greater equality.

Nobel Laureate economist Milton Friedman prophetically warned about this. He said, ‘A  society that puts equality… ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom… a society that puts freedom first will, as a happy by-product, end up with both greater freedom and greater equality.’

This is Australia’s current predicament. Not only is equality back to 1950 levels but productivity has sunk to a sixty-year low. With 2.5 million self-serving bureaucrats intruding into nearly every aspect of peoples’ lives and looking to further expand their authority, it’s not surprising.

But is it too late to stem the authoritarian tide?

For the majority, the mere thought of losing welfare benefits is enough to make them decide the price they pay for bigger government and fewer freedoms is justified. Arguments that they are being bribed with their own money cut no ice. Whether the money is borrowed or taxed is irrelevant to them.

And because the onward march of the state has, until recently, been so insidious and omnipresent, few grasp the grim reality that central authority is replacing spontaneous order. That rather than accepting personal responsibility for their actions, or caring for one another in a spirit of Christian civility, their peers now turn to government for support. Like the severing of neurons in the brain, this loss of social interaction has led to a gradual breakdown in Australia’s traditional mateship.

Conscious that dependence on the state increases their power, today’s ruling class encourages victimhood and learned helplessness. These are  growth industries especially since sanctuary and financial benefits are offered to significant numbers of culturally insular migrants. Many newcomers see no obligation to assimilate or contribute and now express open hostility to Australia’s democratic foundation.

In this environment, the church is rapidly losing its traditional influence on politics, art and daily life. In an attempt to seem ‘progressive’, evolved Judeo-Christian principles are frequently compromised. This feeds into the public school syllabus where religious instruction has largely been scrapped.

In today’s education system, wellness rather than resilience is the focus. Rational debate is discouraged. Children learn to question their sexuality, and are taught critical race theory and, by extension, the politics of envy. They are taught that socialism is good, and that capitalism is bad; that past generations were white supremacists who participated in immoral wars and stole land and children from traditional owners. They are taught they face an existential threat from climate change but, by installing solar panels on their roofs, eating insects instead of meat and taking shorter showers, they can change the weather.

In years to come, intelligence won’t be the problem. It will be what people know that isn’t so.

Karl Marx called religion ‘the opium of the people’. His dream was to replace the concept of a supernatural being with an earthly leader who would be the source of moral authority and lay down a scripture as strict and demanding as any monotheistic religion.

China’s Xi Jinping is the exemplar. He knows what’s best for each of his 1.4 billion Chinese and his thoughts are as sacred as any religious text.

While Australia has no President Xi, the judiciary, business and union leaders, billionaires, celebrities and even the military top brass closely follow the new socialist script. Like abandoning merit and equal opportunity for supposed diversity, equity and inclusion purposes, or like lending their public brand name to advertise divisive political campaigns in the hope of gaining influence and patronage. To them it matters little whether their political masters are of the left or right.

Industry superannuation funds are part of the political elite. Their investments prioritise ideology over returns. This may help dictate management behaviour but it leads to concentration of risk and may negatively impact members’ retirements.

When it comes to the culture wars no cheerleaders have been more effective than the media. Being mainly products of neo-Marxist media schools, journalist distort facts to fit the ideological narrative, cover up socialism’s multiple failings and turn myths into positive propaganda.

Indeed, Australia’s media bias on climate change, nuclear energy, the Voice referendum, Palestine, and Covid coverups, are just as blatant and lethal as the attempts to hide the truth about Hunter Biden’s laptop, President Biden’s cognition and Kamala Harris’s incompetence.

History will show a pivotal moment in Australia’s slide into serfdom was when socialist Malcolm Turnbull deposed Prime Minister Tony Abbott and ended Abbott’s attempts to rescue its democratic institutions and traditional Judeo-Christian values. Since then, successive governments have ignored one hundred years of evidence that wherever and whenever attempts have been made to build a socialist society, they have ended in misery.

It’s said those who believe in nothing will fall for anything and it’s why the West’s enemies in Beijing and Tehran are attacking its evolved belief systems. By disposing of Judeo-Christian beliefs, they hope to replace them with communism or an absolutist monotheistic religion.

It’s not a lost cause, but it will take effort, courage and, maybe, a miracle to turn things around.