Friday, October 24, 2014

Dispirited Delahunty

Green MP Catherine Delahunty sounds defeated in her post at Daily blog. Well she might. How long have the Greens been in opposition now? And I think in terms of the electorate NZ may have reached peak Green.



Parliament opened this week and I still find it a very odd place. Most of the people are reasonably courteous and friendly, but the rituals are archaic and the rules around issues like the swearing in oath are oppressive and undermine MPs’ commitment to upholding Te Tiriti o Waitangi. The Parliamentary opening also celebrates violence, as it involves soldiers and medals, guns, and war planes in the sky. It includes Supreme Court Judges in horsehair wigs. A black rod and a golden mace preside.
It is hard to find the sense of being a Pacific country but when Te Atiawa kuia start the karanga and the whānau perform waiata, then everything comes alive.
The Maiden Speeches are also happening and what a mixed bag they are. Some MPs who look young enough to be my grand babies are making sad enthusiastic speeches about Margaret Thatcher as the role model for their political careers. I have heard new MPs from National and ACT espouse the absolute primacy of the individual with no recognition of how we are social animals who are utterly interdependent. They don’t seem to realise they are the product of many lives and processes, not to mention the taxes of everyone who built the roads, schools, hospitals and institutions where they have gained educational qualifications and privilege.
You would expect these young people to have some modern heroes, but so often its Margaret Thatcher and Roger Douglas who get celebrated. It’s was chilling to see the line-up of older, male Pākehā  former members at the front of Parliament, including Roger Douglas and Don Brash, the architects of the current trickle down disaster. They were sitting watching their young prodigies get up and espouse their individual and property rights obsessions as our world becomes increasingly unequal.

I am thoroughly encouraged that young people are espousing  "individual and property rights."

Delahunty doesn't go very deep. She doesn't understand that the combination of the collective and state compulsion is a dangerous and destructive thing. The combination of the collective - the expression of our interdependence - and voluntarism however is a very good and healthy thing. She can't comprehend that, for instance, the state has weakened the voluntary social interdependence between two parents by financially supplanting the father. She doesn't grasp that the wholesale weakening of individual rights carries with it a devestating weakening of individual responsibility.

The piece finishes,

Thanks to 10 percent of New Zealanders, the Green Party stands here unbeaten, united, and in good voice. - See more at: http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/10/24/guest-blog-catherine-delahunty-back-in-that-house/#sthash.DwrTbFZW.dpuf
Parliament opened this week and I still find it a very odd place. Most of the people are reasonably courteous and friendly, but the rituals are archaic and the rules around issues like the swearing in oath are oppressive and undermine MPs’ commitment to upholding Te Tiriti o Waitangi. The Parliamentary opening also celebrates violence, as it involves soldiers and medals, guns, and war planes in the sky. It includes Supreme Court Judges in horsehair wigs. A black rod and a golden mace preside.
It is hard to find the sense of being a Pacific country but when Te Atiawa kuia start the karanga and the whānau perform waiata, then everything comes alive.
The Maiden Speeches are also happening and what a mixed bag they are. Some MPs who look young enough to be my grand babies are making sad enthusiastic speeches about Margaret Thatcher as the role model for their political careers. I have heard new MPs from National and ACT espouse the absolute primacy of the individual with no recognition of how we are social animals who are utterly interdependent. They don’t seem to realise they are the product of many lives and processes, not to mention the taxes of everyone who built the roads, schools, hospitals and institutions where they have gained educational qualifications and privilege.
You would expect these young people to have some modern heroes, but so often its Margaret Thatcher and Roger Douglas who get celebrated. It’s was chilling to see the line-up of older, male Pākehā  former members at the front of Parliament, including Roger Douglas and Don Brash, the architects of the current trickle down disaster. They were sitting watching their young prodigies get up and espouse their individual and property rights obsessions as our world becomes increasingly unequal.
- See more at: http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/10/24/guest-blog-catherine-delahunty-back-in-that-house/#sthash.DwrTbFZW.dpuf

Thanks to 10 percent of New Zealanders, the Green Party stands here unbeaten, united, and in good voice.

Except she is clearly not in good voice. 

7 comments:

Mark Hubbard said...

'... their individual and property rights obsession ...'

I'm convinced socialists are oblivious of history. The pity is, as proven by this National govt, which is a long way left of centre, we are so far from a world where the people in power even understand the importance of individual or property rights.

Anonymous said...

It is not only the Labour party who should be having a massive review. The Green party vote collapsed from a projected 15% to just over 10% - 33% collapse!

Shane Pleasance said...

I do not think it is ignorance. It is wilful evil.

Anonymous said...

There is no such thing as society.

There is no such thing as "the collective".

There is no "us"

There are individuals and there are families.

Anonymous said...

The most oppressed minority is, and will remain so under National, the Human Individual! (Or the feeble alternatives.)

Cadwallader

Libertyscott said...

Good, she's clueless.

The complete strawman that the hard-left put up about libertarians, that unless you embrace state socialism you reject people acting collectively, or caring for one another, or engaging on a non-monetary level, naturally distresses dimwits like Delahunty.

More and more are rejecting the idea that people like her, and bureaucrats can have the answers to problems, and she doesn't get it.

Young people don't want to be pushed around and don't trust politicians spending their money either.

Jim Rose said...

The Left do not know their hayek

"One of the most original and most important ideas advanced by Hayek is the role of the "division of knowledge" in economic society …

Most of what has been written on systems analysis, computerized data processing, simulation of market processes, and other techniques of decision-making without the aid of competitive markets, appears shallow and superficial in the light of Hayek's analysis of the 'division of knowledge', its dispersion among masses of people.

Information in the minds of millions of people is not available to any central body or any group of decision-makers who have to determine prices, employment, production, and investment but do not have the signals provided by a competitive market mechanism.

Most plans for economic reform in the socialist countries seem to be coming closer to the realization that increasing decentralization of decision-making is needed to solve the problems of rational economic planning."

Fritz Machlup, in "Hayek's Contribution to Economics", Swedish Journal of Economics, Vol. 76, (December 1974)