Speaking the truth. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)

SIR: Patrick McCauley raises an important issue in "Fear of Dissent" (March 2003) in describing the overt censorship exercised by the denizens of the Left in the forums of public debate and in the media, and he is perceptive in identifying contemporary feminist dogma as the primary cause.

McCauley cites statistics showing how males are disadvantaged in most areas of life--but I cited these statistics twenty-five years ago in my 1977 "Minority Report: Victorian Committee on Equal Opportunity in Schools", including data which McCauley does not mention, such as male disadavantage in education and male rates of imprisonment. Even then it was apparent that the success rate for boys in matriculation exams was 15 per cent lower than for girls, and boys were four times as likely to need remedial or special education. It is not females who are the disadvantaged group in life, it is males.

Only now, when the feminist stranglehold on what passes for intellectual debate has somewhat weakened, due in no small measure to the persistence of pro-life and pro-family groups like ours in pointing out feminism's major fallacies, has the federal government addressed problems in the education of boys and offered a few programs to ameliorate their plight.

One does not have to subscribe to "meme" theory to account for the successful censorship by the Left based on "political correctness". At least part of the success is due to conservatives' fear of ridicule by their (left-wing) academic peers. Thus they do not in academia support the commonsense statements by Margaret Tighe of Right to Life that abortion is the killing of an unborn baby--and the lack of rigorous intellectual support becomes even more indefensible as science and ultrasound demonstrate the validity of what Tighe asserts.

Nor do right-wing intellectuals publicly support Rev. Fred Nile, MLC, in his ...