Glenn Reynolds pointed out a news story on this speech by Howard, given at the 50th Anniversary celebration of Quadrant, an Australian conservative journal of literature and ideas. I found it at the Prime Minister's website. It looks good. Though it really doesn't seem to focus on what the news story says it does.
As a matter of fact, the Australian article focuses unduly on what it calls Howard's "scathing attack" of the left's intelligentsia. They are more concerned with reporting that Howard bashed the left--quoting his litany of indictments as if they were reporting to the principal the string of names the bully lobbed against the weakest of the playground.
They don't appear to be overly concerned with sharing the premise of Howard's arguments: that the West has been in the throes of a battle of ideas for the last 60 or so years. And the main pivot points were individualism and collectivism, liberty under the law and overwhelming inevitable historical forces, liberal democratic and totalitarian governments. Or concerned with the conclusion of the Cold War: that those who advocated the West's ideals stood at the end of the day while the others were swept into the ash heap.
Today, the battle continues. Though this time, instead of capitalism, a great religion is hijacked by a minority who have been corrupted by the same ideas that were thought to be vanquished in the Cold War. The tyranny of our day is the resurrected tyranny of yesterday in different trappings, religious and not anti-capitalistic and atheistic, medieval and patriarchical not educated, tolerant, and sophisticated (though their western intellectual progenitors and advocates are).
There. A better summary of Howard's speech. But don't take my word for it, read it for yourself.
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