Tag Archives: NZ politics

Power and Stumbling.

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There is a lot of newsworthiness in being contrary. A few examples over the last days… such as charity being bad because it destroys dignity. (Yes, Charity requires you accept what you have not earnt, and that destroys self worth (which is what the author meant) and builds humility). Or pretending that child abuse is not an issue in certain groups (in New Zealand, Maori) and calling any discussion of this racist. Again, it is not about preserving the feelings of adults. It is about preserving the welfare of the little ones.

For in todays reading Jesus says that the angels protecting children are always before God.

Matthew 18:1-14

1At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” 2He called a child, whom he put among them, 3and said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

6“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea. 7Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks! Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling block comes!

8“If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life maimed or lame than to have two hands or two feet and to be thrown into the eternal fire. 9And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into the hell of fire.

10“Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones; for, I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven. 12What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? 13And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. 14So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.

So what are the stumbling blocks I need to be aware of? I don’t beat my kids into a pulp. But at times I am less holy than I ought to be — and my boys see that. I don’t pretend that I am a ruler of the church or in the kingdom — but I am going to work today, where I run (or rule) an acute psychiatric ward. I cannot pretend that I am without power.

And to offend… these little ones, puts one at risk of great punishment. Calvin notes.

But whosoever shall offend one of those little ones. This appears to be added for the consolation of the godly, that they may not be rendered uneasy by their condition, if they are despised by the world. It is a powerful obstruction to the voluntary exercise of modesty, when they imagine, that by so doing they expose themselves to contempt; and it is hard to be not only treated disdainfully, but almost trodden under foot, by haughty men. Christ therefore encourages his disciples by the consoling truth, that, if their mean condition draws upon them the insults of the world, God does not despise them.

But he appears to have had likewise another object in view; for a dispute had arisen amongst them as to the first place of honor, from which it might naturally have been inferred that the Apostles were tainted with sinful ambition. Every man who thinks too highly of himself, or desires to be preferred to others, must necessarily treat his brethren with disdain. To cure this disease, Christ threatens a dreadful punishment, if any man in his pride shall throw down those who are oppressed with poverty, or who in heart are already humbled.

Under the word offend he includes more than if he had forbidden them to despise their brethren; though the man who gives himself no concern about offending the weak, does so for no other reason, than because he does not render to them the honor to which they are entitled. Now as there are various kinds of offenses, it will be proper to explain generally what is meant by offending If any man through our fault either stumbles, or is drawn aside from the right course, or retarded in it, we are said to offend him. 504 Whoever then desires to escape that fearful punishment which Christ denounces, let him stretch out his hand to the little ones who are despised by the world, and let him kindly assist them in keeping the path of duty; for Christ recommends them to our notice, that they may lead us to exercise voluntary humility; as Paul enjoins the children of God to

condescend to men of low estate, (Ro 12:16,)

and again says that

we ought not to please ourselves, (Ro 15:1.)

To hang a millstone about a man’s neck, and drown him in the sea, was the punishment then reckoned the most appalling, and which was inflicted on the most atrocious malefactors. When our Lord alludes to this punishment, we are enabled to perceive how dear and precious those persons are in the sight of God, who are mean and despised in the eyes of the world.

Now how do we offend? I do not think this is about feelings. I think it is about disrespecting the status of the poor, the downtrodden and oppressed, as adults. As equals. Adults do not need protection from harsh words, or being told “No, you cannot afford this”. Adults have a role — to protect their little ones. Adults need to work — to provide for their children, to improve their community, to ensure that the little ones are protected, safe and growing.

We spend too much time being careful about what we say, and not dealing with problems in our society. Among Maori, some leaders acknowledge there is a problem with violence. If you do not name the problem, confess the problem, you leave a stumbling block. And when people in power prevent this, there is a great evil — as Calvin points out, Jesus teaches this, by alluding to a terrible punishment.

NOTE ON IF YOUR HAND OFFENDS YOU. Jesus teaches by parable and hyperbole. He does not command us to take those who lie and drown them. In the same way, he does not command us to cut various parts of our anatomy off, What he commands is that we examine ourselves, and surrender all of our lives to him. Which is as painful, at times, as having an amputation without anaesthesia.

Let us speak truth to power.

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When laws become long and cumbersone, we are colluding with specail interests.

This is interesting, because we either have free political speech or we do not. If we have blasphemy rules, (which is what stating one can call a group into disrepute is) we have unfree speech.

Wilders entered the dock amid heavy security and promptly affirmed his commitment to free speech, dismissing the charges against him while not entering a plea.

He faces a hefty fine or a year in jail if found guilty on five charges of inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims and insulting their religion for likening, as he routinely does, the Qur’an to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and describing Islam as fascist.

“I am on trial, but on trial with me is the freedom of expression of many Dutch citizens,” he told the Amsterdam district court. “I can assure you, I will continue proclaiming it.”

Wilders then asserted his right to remain silent for the rest of the trial, prompting a comment from the presiding judge, Jan Moors, which was challenged by Wilders’s lawyer.

Moors said Wilders was known for making bold statements but avoiding discussions, adding: “It appears you’re doing so again.”

Bram Moszkowicz, representing Wilders, said the comment gave the appearance that Moors was biased and moved to have him substituted.

The hearing was suspended while other judges consider the complaint. They are to rule tomorrow on Wilders’s challenge, meaning that a new panel of three judges could be appointed, delaying the trial by several months.

“I thought I had a right to a fair trial, including the right to remain silent,” said Wilders. “It is scandalous that the judge passes comment on that. A fair trial is not possible with judges like that.”

via Geert Wilders trial halted as lawyer accuses judge of bias | World news | The Guardian.

We now have judges running a form of the inquisition. Wilders is a heretic. As this is a crime of exceptional nature, he cannot even keep silent.

For the elite are most intolerant if they are challenged. Paul Henry yesterday asked about the ethnicity of the next governer-general: our current one is a kiwi Indian. This offended a Yarpie communist who was appointed by the previous socailists to be our person of perpetual offence:

Race Relations Commissioner Joris de Bres said Henry showed appalling ignorance.

“The implication of his comments seems to be that anyone of Indian or Asian descent cannot be a New Zealander and should not hold public office unless they `look or speak like one’,” he said.

“I am intrigued to know what Paul Henry’s definition is of looking and speaking like a New Zealander, given that New Zealand’s population includes 650,000 people of Asian descent and many people of different ethnicities who speak English with a wide variety of accents.”

A spokeswoman for TVNZ said there had been two complaints this morning.

However; “The audience tell us over and over again that one of the things they love about Paul Henry is that he’s prepared to say the things we quietly think but are scared to say out loud,” she said.

“The question of John Key is the same, we want the answer but are to scared to ask.”

Mr de Bres found TVNZ’s response concerning.

Mr de Bres, you are a member of the inquisition. We have a right to think. We have a right to speak. And you dare not limit this: If you defend the “dath to Kufir” shouting of the Islamic Rageboy and condemn those who question your defecation on the rights and traditions of your adopted home, you are a hypocrite as well as a traitor.

Link back to Psycho Milt.

Hi Andrew: If they are yours, you have to sack them.

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There is an old saying in my field — respondat superior. It means that the senior member of the team is responsible for those below him.For she is supervising the other members of the team

And if something goes wrong, she is responsible. It does not appear to apply to the elite (I was going to say the “left elite”, but that is redundant). Two people have been arrested for voting irregularities. From the herald.

The irregularities involved people outside of Auckland, but related to the Papatoetoe ward in south Auckland, investigation head Detective Inspector Mark Gutry said last month.

Two men, aged 36 and 39, both of Papatoetoe, have been jointly charged with forgery and will appear in the Manukau District Court today.

Further charges would follow and it was possible more arrests would be made, Mr Gutry said.

Police had been working closely with the Electoral Enrolment Centre to ensure a credible and democratic process in the upcoming local body election, he said.

Despite the arrests, the investigation was expected to continue for some time.

Labour president Andrew Little told Radio New Zealand today he understood one of the accused had links his party.

Last month he said if the police investigation revealed any member of Labour was involved the party would take appropriate action internally.

via Two arrested in voter enrolment probe – Super City – NZ Herald News.

Now, if the person is convicted, there must be a public disavowal of the person. At least.

If the integrity of that election is ruined by these actions, there should be a second election. And the leadership of the Auckland Labour Party — or RAAM , or whoever, will need to resign with the person involved.

Because we cannot tolerate corruption in these processes. Otherwise, be become Obama’s America.

Concentrate in the important.

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The Times has an interesting set of comments. In New Zealand, we have, until recently, kept private things private. For we are fully aware that our politicians are not saints. But things changed… slowly. Having the PM and Leader of the Opposition have to play happy families — Paul Holmes visiting — has not helped. It affects the children. There have been suicides.

But… there are standards. I support the Whale in exposing rorts of credit cards for private meals, flowers, underpants and other things.

Like McCrystal, I have been at times scathing about my employers. I have had confrontations with the suits. I have advocated for staff. That is part of my job. However, if a reporter was present… I would turn into a jargon spouting eunuch. It’s called survival.

Then, after Vietnam, an ethos of exposure swept the culture. The assumption among many journalists was that the establishment may seem upstanding, but there is a secret corruption deep down. It became the task of journalism to expose the underbelly of public life, to hunt for impurity, assuming that the dark hidden lives of public officials were more important than the official performances…

In other words, over the course of 50 years, what had once been considered the least important part of government became the most important. These days, the inner soap opera is the most discussed and the most fraught arena of political life.

And into this world walks Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

General McChrystal was excellent at his job. He had outstanding relations with the White House and entirely proper relationships with his various civilian partners in the State Department and beyond. He set up a superb decision-making apparatus that deftly used military and civilian expertise.

But McChrystal, like everyone else, kvetched. And having apparently missed the last 50 years of cultural history, he did so on the record, in front of a reporter. And this reporter, being a product of the culture of exposure, made the kvetching the center of his magazine profile.

By putting the kvetching in the magazine, the reporter essentially took run-of-the-mill complaining and turned it into a direct challenge to presidential authority. He took a successful general and made it impossible for President Obama to retain him.The reticent ethos had its flaws. But the exposure ethos, with its relentless emphasis on destroying privacy and exposing impurities, has chased good people from public life, undermined public faith in institutions and elevated the trivial over the important.

via Op-Ed Columnist – General McChrystal and the Culture of Exposure – NYTimes.com.

It may be that McCrystal has more honour that I, or any other Kiwi, has.

On the bosses…

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Chris Trotter is a living fossil. He is one of the few “old unionists” left: the educated (generally self-deucated) sons and daughters of workers who made up the bulk of union activists and were the backbone of the Labour party from its formation until the politics of personality took over.

Chris is a Dunedinite. He believes that wealth and philanthropy is not part of the NZ way of life: as he said on his comments page

You raise an interesting point about the status of philanthropy in New Zealand. And you’re right – New Zealanders are not philanthropists in the same way that the British and Americans are philanthropists.

The reason for this is, I believe, related to my statement about the sort of people who settled in New Zealand.

A great many of them – the Highland Scots, for example – had no reason to love the wealthy landowners and businessmen responsible for clearing them off their ancestral lands. The same could be said for the Irish and many of the English working class emigrants who sailed for New Zealand.

In the decade before the colonisation of New Zealand there had been a fundamental shift in the way the poor were treated in the United kingdom. The old Poor Law (which had its roots in the communitarian traditions of the Middle Ages) had been replaced by the “New Poor Law” of 1834.

The new legislation introduced the infamous workhouses (a sort of super-work-for-the-dole scheme) made famous in Charles Dickens’ “Oliver Twist”. The whole system was administered by boards of middle class “guardians” and was heartily detested by its principal victims – the rural and urban poor.

When these folk came to New Zealand they moved swiftly to establish a system that took the responsibility for “looking after” the poor out of the hands of the wealthy and placed it instead in the hands of a democratically controlled state.

From “cold as charity” to “from the cradle to the grave” you might say. Or, from private philanthropy to collective welfare.

I’m not sure if Chris is right. Logan Campbell gave most of his land to Auckland for public parks. The Sey Hoys and the “Tartan Mafia” of Dunedin have built halls and kirks, funded research: the same groups are helping fund the Dunedin Stadium. Chris is tapping into a thread of conservative wowserism that has run through the chapel, union hall and ratepayer’s association: that is not the only thread that makes up the cloth of New Zealand. He also forgets that the same unions, before socail welfare, collectively provided for their dependents through freindly societies.

I find Chris’ suggestion that the state should be the provider somewhat neive. This decade, the state has had more strikes than most private employers. When the whale (who is not a social democrat) calls the unions because he sees a boss abuse workers… the need for collective advocacy is accepted in NZ. The state, however, is not that collective, and when the government controls a large percentage of the economy… they are too large and too blunt a force to act to make changes. Besides, the old unionists argued for self reliance, (intra) community support (the two are not contradictory) and self improvement.

This “labour” government is trying to make most people passive, dependant, and indoctrinated. “Old” labour, like Regain Democrats will (and should) vote National this election: there is no future in passivity and poverty.