"Despite its tolerance of diversity, Australia remains a Christian country."
Now I think Windschuttle may just mean that despite the country's current ethnic and religious diversity, Australia is still a predominantly Christian country. While this statement has a certain xenophobic tinge to it, it's still fairly accurate. However the sentence is rather ambiguously worded, so I'm going to dig a little deeper.
Whilst lacking the bombast of his claims that only 2 or 3 (has he conceded a third yet?) Aboriginals were killed during the period of European settlement in Australia, the above statement would indicate a perception that is either somewhat apt, ridiculously fuzzy or very sinister.
Due to the vocal nature of many on the Christian Right, the current opinion of Christians by "secular progressives" isn't a very favourable one. Quite frankly, they are seen as psychopaths. It's here that Windschuttle's line could be deemed apt:
"Despite its (attempts to move towards) tolerance of diversity, Australia remains a (gay-bashing, single-mother-hating, Arab-killing) country".
While the Christian Right may be on the cover of all the magazines and hold the microphone at all the rallies, they are not, in the same way that suicide bombers are not Muslims, Christians. Let me re-write Windschuttle's line and see if it can make a bit more sense.
"Australia remains a predominantly Christian country and exhibits this with its tolerance of diversity"
Isn't that better? While I personally struggle with grasping the concept of God (if God is perfect why does he have such an inferiority complex that he not only needs to be worshipped, but also states we aren't allowed to worship any other gods, which due to his monotheism don't actually exist?), the application of compassion, tolerance and generally being nice I'm all for. Windschuttle tars Christianity with the deeds of its extremist elements in the same way his ideological brethren tar Islam with the deeds of its extremist elements. The difference being that he would be, if not a supporter than definitely, a sympathiser of the views of the "Christian" Right.
Which surely would make the sentence even stranger; people may have intolerant views, but no-one wants to actually be perceived as being intolerant. Unless, however, the word "tolerance" was to undergo a transformation and no longer mean "a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, etc. differ from one's own"
Conservative commentators and spinners have a significant tradition of word manipulation. The most obvious example is the term "liberal" in the US (liberalism having absolutely nothing to do with the Liberal Party of Australia). In the political sense Dictionary.com defines "liberal" as Favourable to progress, however conservatives have successfully been able to change the perception around this word so it now carries a stigma of "weakness" or in more extreme cases "corrupting".
Whilst not wanting to be seen as a conspiracy theorist, I do believe that it is quite possible that the term "tolerance" could be the latest target of conservative word manipulators, and Windschuttle was either knowingly taking this approach, or the process has already begun and he is a more sub-conscious participant. You can see our more hysterical conservative commentators licking their lips already: Are you going to be "tolerant" of Jihadists? Are you going to be "tolerant" of dole-buldging immigrants? Are you going to be "tolerant" of black gay homosexual Muslim men pursuing your teenage daughter? WHERE WILL THE TOLERANCE END?!!
The fact is the Right are arseholes, and they do know that they are arseholes. However it is a constant struggle for them to trick the general public into believing that they aren't arseholes. It must be hard to have words such as "tolerance", "compassion" "equity" and "progress" against you, so it makes sense for them to attack the root of the problem. If they can't have the good words on their team, they are just going to have to change the words.
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