March 11, 2007

The Nile Delta

A delta is the collection of sediment at the mouth of a river. The Nile delta is my definition for the remarkable collection of ill-feeling that surfaced in a recent post regarding Fred Nile.

Dominic Knight has a blog on the upcoming New South Wales election, and the subject of his most recent post is the Christian Member of Parliament, Rev. Fred Nile. Fred Nile is a Uniting Church minister who has been in NSW Parliament since 1981.

The underlying theme of the post is that Knight considers Nile as "someone who...seeks to impose conservative Christian values on everyone in NSW, irrespective of their religion...". In fact, this is the (very strong) feeling of at least 90% of the 141 respondents to this post.

The vehement opposition to Nile is curious for two reasons:

1. Since 1981, Nile has been democratically elected. His presence in parliament is legitimate - he has been elected by a majority of people in his electorate. People may not like the fact that Nile got elected, but this is democracy (and subsequently freedom of speech and opinion) in action.

2. Nile is accused of imposing his values on other people, as if he is the only politician with values. Yet we all have values. Nile's are informed by his Christian faith, others by their own framework or experiences. Every politician is going to bring to the table their own values, and those of the people they represent.

It seems that free speech is good, and democratic representation is good, as long as it is not by a Christian.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

yup yup; no1 wants to hear our opinion or views because they are too close for comfort. better still...they're right! lol

Aleisha Crabb said...

oops, by the way, that was aleisha.

Tiger said...

I submitted the guts of this post as a comment on Knight blog, but unfortunately it wasn't accepted.

& said...

Who or what is "Kinght blog"?

Tiger said...

Dominic Knight is, I believe, from ABC TV's 'The Chaser'.

The link to his blog is included in the post, but may not have been very obvious.

Please see: http://blogs.smh.com.au/nswelection2007/archives/2007/03/whos_who_in_the_minor_party_zo.html

& said...

Thanks, i probbably should of re-read your post and cliked on the link before asking

& said...

This may be a bit late in posting, but I just read this article and it reminded me a little bit of this post and your comment at the end

It seems that free speech is good, and democratic representation is good, as long as it is not by a Christian