Here's why.
Dear Editor
Your report about opposition to Cindy Kiro's home-screening plan (September 10) re-iterates New Zealand's "shocking" child abuse statistics. The hyping of child abuse statistics and use of emotive adjectives look like persuading New Zealanders that universal monitoring of children is now fait accompli. But the facts are child deaths due to maltreatment are falling and only 10.2 per 1,000 children had a substantiated finding of abuse (most commonly emotional) or neglect against them in the year to June 2007. One percent of all children.
National Party leader John Key says mandatory investigation of all children should be a last resort. It shouldn't be any resort. It is a foolish waste of time and money. With both Labour and National welcoming the proposed database to track the development of all children, increasingly we are being offered no political opposition and no choice. Will there be any point in staging an election next year?
Lindsay Mitchell
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4 comments:
You hit the nail squarely on the head there Lindsay.
On a recent post, someone commented that socialism is dead. Well maybe by some definitions, but collectivism is rampant and hardly anyone appears to care.
ACT appear to support socialised healthcare and education while NZLibs seem quite comfortable using nationalistic and religious collectivist steriotypes to categorise and pass judgement without reference to individuals at all.
Dave Christian
" .. while NZLibs seem quite comfortable using nationalistic and religious collectivist steriotypes (sic) to categorise and pass judgement without reference to individuals at all."
Dave, what do you mean by that?
Sus
It is reasonable to argue that it is unfortunate that some people do not value democratic institutions and/or constitutional protections of individual liberty. It is also reasonable to describe some states as theocracies and argue that this type of government is a thoroughly bad thing.
However, use of words like "islamofacist" goes far beyond such arguments. The word is explicitly tribal and purposefully divisive. It is also collectivist in it's commonplace usage which seeks to imply that entire nations full of people can and should be branded negatively because they have failed to silence some extremist voices.
Dave
Thanks for the response, Dave. Agree with your first paragraph. But doesn't the second paragraph as a whole contradict the last sentence of the first para?
I disagree that the use of the term "Islamofascist" is tribal or collective. I would not presume to tar all Muslims with that brush - although I wish to God the who majority who reportedly do not support the extremists were a little more active about it ...
Hitler's Nazi Party were philosophically fascist, thus it was appropriately to consider all Nazis fascist.
Those odious flat-earthers, the Taliban, (for example), are philosophically fascist as well as Islamist; thus I believe it acceptable to refer to them and their followers as Islamofascist.
As a libertarian, I obviously respect and defend the rights of the individual, but if people choose to be a part of the collective, they deserve the tag.
Do you see the point I make?
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