Representative democracy requires people to be elected and once elected to act as they deem in the best interests of the community. There is a big difference between WRONG, and CORRUPT. Our opponents are wrong, sometimes crossing to corrupt, but mostly just wrong.

Many are misguided, and there are important reasons why, because the people that 'guided' them are wrong.

A lot of people, especially the deranged left, prefer the idea that their political opponents are evil. These people imagine opponents acting for their own self-interest in contravention of what they know is right. In my opinion this way of thinking fails to give you a handle on how to respond rationally and effectively for the success of your own interests. Why on earth should we adopt the deranged way of thinking of Pilger, Chomsky and such?

I prefer to believe that John Howard acted as he thought best for everyone, without understanding that real evidence was against the emotionally based anti-gun position.

The best and brightest minds working on the problem in Government and academia were blind with prejudice against the redneck white male values they imagine shooters have. Richard Harding when he wrote 'Firearms and Violence in Australian Life' (1979-80), reported that his colleagues assumed that gun owners were mentally ill, or motivated in unspecified bad ways. He abstained from that prejudice and reported his finding that gun owners were people from across the community, indistinguishable from the rest of the population in any way except owning a firearm.

That prejudice is where academics, public servants and feminists live and they have set the values and agendas for the modern governing class. There is malice involved, but the malice is just a by-product of ignorant prejudice and the drug of self-approval that drives moral campaigners.

I believe our best tactic is to de-legitimise that drug, to undermine public respect for activist loonies and the journalists that use them so cynically.