PURITAN NATION:

[I]t is rarely pleasant to be told, albeit by implication, that you have missed the point. In The Forgotten Menzies Stephen Chavura and Greg Melleuish show that the "real" Menzies was a creation and a personification of a late-nineteenth-century world of "Greater Britain" that was very shaky by the 1930s and finally swept away during the 1960s. They demonstrate that twenty-first-century understandings of the terms "liberal" and "conservative" cannot, therefore, be usefully applied to Menzies's thinking. He would have found the terms and definitions "puzzling."

Menzies was not, as the authors emphasise, a profound philosophical thinker. His thoughts "tended to be discursive and superficial." Nor was he primarily interested in advocating principles of liberalism. "He sought the reality of freedom, not the pursuit of a theoretical liberty." He wanted "to govern in an effective fashion for the benefit of all Australians so that they could peacefully and freely pursue their goals." He did not have a coherent philosophy behind this objective so much as a set of governing principles.

These principles were shaped by two long-gone nineteenth-century influences: "cultural puritanism" and "British idealism." Menzies, the authors suggest, "may most helpfully be described as a cultural puritan who was also touched by British idealism -- itself strongly informed by cultural puritanism."

The authors describe "cultural puritanism" as "an outgrowth of the powerful connection between Protestantism and political liberty in British culture." In essence, the cultural puritan was self-reliant, with a sturdy spirit of independence and humanitarian instincts, industrious, honest and honourable, a law-abiding Britisher who accepted responsibilities to the community.

The second influence, "British idealism," was at its core "a faith that a new, better and more spiritual world was coming into being, a world that would reveal what was best in human nature." Menzies encountered this faith at a time when its adherents -- in Britain and Australia -- were criticising the elevation of utilitarianism and materialism. According to the authors, Menzies always looked beyond the material benefits achieved by advances in science and technology to the gains made in the moral, spiritual and intellectual condition.

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