However one can only do this if the general culture is “boring” ie embodying conservative middle class bourgeois values that are necessary for long-term planning (to accumulate residential capital (mortgage amortisation) and intellectual capital (higher education) requires long term planning which requires social stability.

It is no accident that boring old Menzies was the most conservative social policy promoter and the most successful Liberal political officer. Nor is it an accident that the unexciting NE Asians (exhibit A = Penny Wong) are the most successful immigrants (after Jews of course.)

AUS’s version of the Open Society is founded on a vast base of self-governing, responsible middle class households. Their success depends on the average member of the populace being able to get and keep their sh*t together.

The Left-liberal cultural elitist prescription for social progress is a mish-mash of multicultural diversity and sub-cultural perversity. In themselves these frivolities are harmless fun or at worse just a nuisance for most people. However, down at the LHS of the Bell Curve they lead to anomie, alienation and anarchy. And one bad apple…

Most normal household leaders know this instinctively. Which is why they tend to be patrons of a muted version of Right-wing populism, seen largely on commercial current affairs TV or talk-back radio.

These are the people who the Right has courted and needs to court if it is to win office and govern successfully. They are more likely to found self-sufficient households and self-run businesses. This is the best foundation for the Open Society.

In the long run that is the best guard against a sprawling bureaucratic form of serfdom.

On the other hand, there is enough public navel-gazing by political movements (including on blogs) that with effort distinctions could be understood by outsiders.

The people who belong to any group — the “insiders” — generally know things about themselves and each other to which outsiders are not privy.

In political movements, insiders generally do not go around publicizing their differences from each other, charting the exact factional fault lines or cataloging their complete agenda. Speech — especially public speech — is generally selective, tactical, focused not on disclosing one’s personal beliefs and full agenda but either (a) inducing others to co-operate or acquiesce in whatever part of one’s agenda one is pursing now, or (b) discrediting and/or dividing those who stand in one’s way.

Given the lack of frankness with which insiders usually confront outsiders (including their opponents, the people they aim to persuade and detached observers), it seems inevitable that outsiders are often going to have a superficial, imprecise and unstable understanding of what the insiders are on about, and it is natural that this will be reflected in superficial, vague and easily interchanged labels.