Apart from March 2nd being the birthday of Mikhail Gorbachev, it was one year ago today, at The Brit Awards, that Miley Cyrus, daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus, won Best International Song for “Flowers”, a celebration of the single life.

For me the first verse of that song paints a realistic but very chilling picture of the modern world:

“We were good, we were gold
Kinda dream that can’t be sold
We were right ’til we weren’t
Built a home and watched it burn.”

My new conservative friend Joe and I have had a fascinating exchange of ideas this weekend on how to set the world free from this sort of negative reality.

I told Joe my core belief that what the world needs now is a restoration of freedom. He then told me a list of other problems which he thought took precedence.

“I agree with you” responded Joe, “but freedom is not the central issue on peoples minds to move towards conservatives.” Joe believed that conservatives need to stand up for the battler to alter the perception that they only help business.”

I observed that, in his four freedoms speech in 1941, American President Franklin Roosevelt described this as creating freedom from want.

Joe then added: “We also need the courage for our leaders to condemn what is being done to our children in the gender transitioning clinics and also the damage being done in female sports and not to mention the issues in female change rooms.”

I described these concerns as freedom from fear, freedom for kids to grow up naturally, freedom for parents to be the parents and freedom from injustice in sports.

I compared Joe’s concerns about crime and cost of living with Roosevelt’s concerns for freedom from fear and freedom from want.

For the problem of how to actually get more freedom in the world, I finish with a few quotes from Mikhail Gorbachev whose birthday is today.

“The world will not accept dictatorship or domination.”

“The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization.”

“It is better to discuss things, to argue and engage in polemics than make perfidious plans of mutual destruction.”

“There should be competition and exchanges between different countries, but there are certainly certain universal values, and that is freedom and democracy.”

“America must be the teacher of democracy …………”

“Democracy must learn to defend itself.”

How much of this type of thinking can lead us to a world where young people do not believe that the homes they build will burn down?

Geoff Fox, March 2, 2025, Melbourne, Australia