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Architecture
and Alligator Breeding Howard:
World-Historical Individual, 2004. Howard and the Onset
of Parousia (Proven Out of Schleiermacher), 2004. By Lance Banbury; 14pp;
18pp; Galaxy Press, 71 Recreation St., Tweed Heads, NSW 2485, Australia. |
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The
madness of George Bush I was answered by his ouster, but Bill Clinton taught
the American voter to be philosophical. In America, unfortunately, philosophy
is a dead art, like architecture and alligator breeding. Not
so in Australia, anyway. Lance Banbury understands the living art and applies
it to circumstances. When the conservative firebrand Pauline Hanson arose in
his country, he understood her in the light of Christ’s commandment to
the young man full of riches, and he is not finished there. The same light
exposes John Howard, the Australian Prime Minister, in the gentle Part I of
this work. Having established the primitive Church and its perceived failings
as a guidepost, Banbury in Part II assails the PM with the specter of
Christ’s return. Not since Belshazzar's feast has the writing on the
wall been so evident. The
world-historical individual is one who lifts himself out of parochialism onto
the stage of history, and may be apperceived thereby. Consequently, the
American or any other reader need not feel, as Alexander Woolcott said of
Proust, that "one is bathing in someone else’s water." Au
contraire, as Banbury explains: "The best way of entering upon the pivotal
part of this discourse has seemed to be by orientating the main stress. This
consists of two representative keynotes in Howard’s televised interview
on A Current Affair, 27th April this year. Two prevailing themes were
announced: '...respect for democracy and true religious beliefs' and '...we
have got to understand we’re living in a new world order.' These
phrases made definite the principles by which the modus operandii of the
thinking of the Redeemer, was in fact thought. The dilemma of separating the
mode, communicability and quality substantiating this manner of thinking from
the subjective thinker of it, has not been accidental: it resides in the
noumenal nature of thought itself. It is the question Yeats asked in Among
School Children, 'How can we know the dancer from the dance?' (64)." It
will perhaps be objected that Australia has a parliamentary system. The
American political convention, it might be pointed out, is no longer anything
more than a show nowadays. |