People are starting to wake up to not only The Voice, but the philosophical reasoning behind it, which is ironically, deeply racist. Douglas Murray, in a stand-out article for The Australian, persuasively argues: ‘Australia feels like it is stuck in an apology loop because it is. And the reason that it doesn’t seem to be getting the country anywhere is because it never could – however many cycles of this you want to go around for.’

As an Englishman – and descendant of those dreaded ‘colonisers’ – Murray has the benefit of the outsider’s perspective as well as the uncanny ability and courage of speaking truth to power, especially when he observes that the emperor has no clothes. And as such, his insight into our cultural malaise really does bell the cat. As Murray writes:

As I have found when travelling the country, the typical Australian no longer seems to me to be that striding, sensible, happy-go-lucky figure of old. They seem – in my experience – to be guilt-ridden people, forever caveating their thoughts and self-conscious to an often excruciating degree.

Why? Because if you browbeat any group of people for long enough you will get that result. A cringing, creeping-through life person, who subdues their thoughts and distrusts their own speech and actions.

What’s happened to us as a nation? We used to be internationally known for our larrikin spirit which delighted to call out authoritarianism and its associated pomposity. Just think, Crocodile Dundee. But if Covid showed us anything, it’s that we now want Big Brother to tell us what to do. We’re okay for the government to take away our freedoms. And we’re more than willing to say ‘Sorry’ to people we haven’t personally offended. And not just once, but again and again and again and again.

This is where Murray really puts his finger on the heart of the issue. As Murray argues in his book The War on the West, there is a profound ethical problem with current generations apologising from the mistakes of the previous generation. And that is, they themselves are not responsible. This also means that it’s disingenuous of those who are benefiting from the confession to even ask for it. As Murray writes:

As a number of the most serious and profound ethicists of the last century have agreed, an apology can work only when it comes from someone who has done a wrong and is accepted by someone who has been wronged. If it comes from someone who has themselves done no wrong and goes to someone who has not actually been wronged, then the deal is a fraud. If such an apology is offered and accepted it is a fraud on both sides. Someone who has done no wrong is pretending to be speaking for the dead and people who have suffered no direct wrong are pretending to be able to accept an apology on behalf of people they did not know.

Sadly, even my fellow Christian brothers and sisters have fallen into this self-flagellating apology loop. Which is particularly strange – as well as more than a little troubling – when the Bible itself says that only the soul who is guilty of sin should be punished (i.e. Ezekiel 18:20).

What’s more, if reparations are to be paid, then just how many nations will be expected to financially contribute? What’s more, should we set up a genetic database to discern who is in fact eligible? This ever-diminishing inherited guilt is almost impossible to calculate and if attempted, the potential consequences would be disastrous. As Murray rightly points out:

The issue of reparations now comes down not to descendants of one group paying money to descendants of another group. Rather, it comes down to people who look like the people to whom a wrong was done in history receiving money from people who look like the people who may have done wrong. It is hard to imagine anything more likely to rip apart a society than attempting a wealth transfer based on this principle.

While Douglas Murray is himself not a Christian, I am sincerely grateful to God for his writing. Rarely do we see today someone who communicated with such courage and common sense as this interview with Piers Morgan demonstrates:

One can only hope that the mainstream media in this country might also stop kowtowing to the progressive zeitgeist and call out its bully-boy tactics of the left.