"For Behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, the whole stay of water, the mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient, the captain of fifty, and the honourable man, and the counsellor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator. And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them. And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour: and the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable." Isiah 3:3-5
It's never safe to assume that any biblical text was written specifically for one's own time. Many texts have been applicable across many times, and most are applicable for all time. So it would be impossible to ascertain to which time it was intended and to which it is simply, coincidentally, applicable.
The text above is unequivocally applicable to our time, whether you give religious or even intellectual assent to the content of the bible or not. It's generally frowned upon for the board of a company, a government cabinet, or even the clergy of a church to be comprised of crusty old white guys. To the extent of opportunities like these existing only for crusty old white guys, I would agree with that sentiment.
If the conversation is to be had about the effects of competent men being taken out of leadership positions, skilled positions, or religious positions, especially if it is simply to facilitate a shallow form of diversity predicated on gender or race rather than diversity of thought, the question must be asked; does it have the desired or even the same outcome?
My mind goes immediately to the Victorian Senator, Lidia Thorpe, about whom I read today that she has been banned from a strip club for yet another race-related public tirade. If a male senator is known to have visited a strip club, let alone been banned from one, it would be a national scandal. But for the indigenous female senator from Melbourne, it was just a minor detail in a long list of recent accolades. This, of course, comes after calling Queen Elizabeth II a "coloniser" while being sworn into the allegedly racist institution of which the Queen of our constitutional monarchy was head and from which she has no problem drawing her six-figure annual pay cheque. This came slightly before being dragged off the street by police during a protest, which happened slightly before she levelled an abusive rant at a fellow indigenous elder in an airport, which happened right after dating a bikie gang member while serving on a parliamentary law enforcement committee.
Liberally sprinkle on top of this the fact that her political career in both the Victorian parliament and the federal parliament has achieved little to nothing tangible, and one has to wonder if a crusty old white guy might be a preferable candidate to represent the once-great state of Victoria in the Senate chamber.
The unfortunate part of this whole episode of Australia's political history is that there are people out there who legitimately believe that this level of immaturity and lack of adult sense is actually worthy of our Parliament. At least old white men have some decorum, usually.
Take, for another example, the response of officials in Queensland, from the government down, to the Presbyterian Church's intention of banning students in same-sex relationships or sexually active relationships from leadership positions in Presbyterian schools. One government minister couldn't understand what one's sexual orientation or activity had to do with leadership ability. We can be confident a crusty old white man could differentiate an issue of values from an issue of ability. Leadership requires modelling the values of the institution in which it is practised as a necessary corollary of ability. If the minister mentioned above has such a loose grasp on this most basic and fundamental concept of leadership, the practice of leading people has fallen a long way since the departure of the crusty old white men.
And where has the eloquent orator gone? Julia Gillard's Misogyny speech is the most celebrated speech of the first 22 years of the century. For the unthinking, politically disinterested or ignorant, it was a knock-out blow to the old guard of Parliament, still laden with misogynistic old white men. To anyone who thinks, it was a squealing rant borne of offence at fairly usual adversarial political criticism, which, in reality, was considerably more timid than what Gillard herself has levelled at her male interlocutors.
This is the accepted quality of leadership in our nation. Are things really better post-old white man? And we haven't even mentioned the youth activists yet. The ones who think their opinions matter because they have redeemed their ancestors of the racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic, and whatever other trending isms and phobias I don't know about but am probably guilty of, of the past by re-segregating schools and college campuses and putting men in women's bathrooms and at the top of women's sport, breaking down and burning with fanatic enthusiasm the basic distinguishing rights that women have inherently exercised throughout history.
There are even youth activists out there who wish women had the same rights as guns. I say youth, although I'm sure there are adults who think the same, we can assume they have the mind of a child.
Here's why. Let's imagine for a moment that women have the same rights as guns. The first thing we need to settle is the aetiological, that is, the purpose or nature of the existence of women. Since guns are inanimate objects, and it is not them but their possessors to which rights are conferred, we must, to achieve the desired parity, assume that women are possessions. With that settled, now we can put their rights, albeit really the rights of their possessors, in a state of total equality. Their possessors cannot take them in public in many US states and not at all in Australia. If you think women are going to school anymore, being now totally equal to firearms, think again. Women on aeroplanes? No chance. If you want to take a woman in a car, make sure you are appropriately licensed. And don't even think about taking a woman in a voting booth or a government building.
This is what the youth who want a say in the direction of entire nations believe. Add to this the idea that men can get pregnant and that it's immoral not to allow a male boxer into the ring with a female boxer, with the only prerequisite that the male boxer thinks he is a female boxer. There are people in the West who genuinely believe they are oppressed by words against this on the same planet where North Korea exists. They also believe they are history's most guilty people because of the historical practice of slavery, which they were among the first and only people to prohibit, on the same planet where more slaves exist now than then. They also believe that women are free when they serve soul-crushing corporate power hierarchies but enslaved when they lovingly serve a loving family and community.
Except by sheer ignorance, one cannot with any authority claim, neither in economic terms, nor social, nor political or private, that purging our public and private institutions of crusty old men has resulted in anything but shambles. I'm not saying that positions of leadership should be reserved for them. Nor am I saying that only old white men merit leadership positions. I'm simply saying that merit is a better predictor of effectiveness and subsequent prosperity than identity.
Also, when I use the term "crusty old white men", I'm using a derogatory cultural term for people, who, in reality, are well educated, have usually raised a family, sometimes started, grown or worked for businesses, who have real-life experience and knowledge of the functioning of society and its institutions. They do not always have pure motives, and history is replete with their nefarious purposes. But there are among them the greatest men the world has known.
They are the ones who abolished slavery and mandated a fight to the death over its trade, to the disgust of the secular elite, which now condemns them for having practised it to begin with. They are the ones who gave women the vote with the same condemnation of secular society. They are the ones who went to war or who sent their peers and facilitated the winning of wars against genuine tyrannies. They facilitated prosperity and opportunity for posterity. If you disagree, if you condemn these men, consider this: there are more people moving into this country than there are moving out of it.
These men are waylaid and put to pasture in favour of children, children, at that, without self-control, without reason, demanding the privileges of decision-making without any of the responsibility. They denigrate our institutions and the accomplishments made by them. They leave reason by the wayside and deem truth aggressive.
The child behaves proudly against the ancient and the base against the honourable. Let me warn, dear readers, that if we do not correct the intellectual and moral atrophy of our youth, we will be a society without merit, children will be our princes, and babes will rule over us. What is bad now will become irreparably worse, and every one will oppress the other, everyone against his neighbour in the Orwellian dystopia we already see materialising before our very eyes.
What can we do about it? Get a quality education, develop some moral fibre, take care of your body, eat well, raise a family and spend time with them, especially outside, work honestly, and read broadly and often. I can guarantee that people doing this are walking through psychology practice doors far less frequently than porn-addicted, fast-food-devouring, lonely TV-addicted consumer units. Then one day, with some cultivation, you might have something to offer the world as a fighting man, or an honourable man, or a judge, or a prophet, or an eloquent orator, or a skilled artisan, or a leader of men. This is far and away preferable to the blue-haired, sexually confused, identity-deprived cipher enslaved to addiction type of person, which secular society is culturally subsidising.