Garth George - apologist for Harawira

Garth George says Hone Harawira is absolutely entitled to his views and desires and those of us who don't like it are victims of 'multiculturalism'. Please.

Why don't we simply acknowledge Hone Harawira is a Maori who takes great pride in his race and wants to keep his bloodline pure?

We don't because most of us, from the Prime Minister down, have become unthinking victims of the doctrine of multiculturalism, in all its politically correct dissimulation and deception.

32 years ago I was 'going out with' a German/Cook Island boy. I brought him home one night when he missed the last train to Porirua. He slept on the couch. My mum and dad treated him the same as any other boyfriend - if not better. My mother used to predict that I would "fall for" (northern vernacular for 'marry') a Maori because I was attracted to polynesians. That probably had everything to do with my closest friend being polynesian. (In fact, in later years the same friend admits she steadfastly avoided Maori boys because she didn't want to end up living the same lifestyle as an adult that she had as a child - overcrowding and lack of privacy. We both had our own prejudices. Perhaps mine could be described as positive and her's negative.) Anyway, my parents never gave any suggestion, not an inkling that they were against my partnering with someone of another race. Unsurprisingly my attitudes mirror their's.

And this was back in the 1970s. Long before political correctness had started strangling freedom of speech and thought.

As Britain's Chief Rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, says in his book The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society, multiculturalism is a threat to liberal democracy, stifles free speech and has "led not to integration but to segregation". Lord Sacks defines multiculturalism as an attempt to affirm diverse communities and make ethnic and religious minorities more respected. But, he says, the movement has run its course.

"Liberal democracy is in danger. The politics of freedom risks descending into the politics of fear," Lord Sacks says.

Britain's politics had been poisoned by the rise of identity politics, as minorities and aggrieved groups jockeyed first for rights, then for special treatment.

The process, he says, began with Jews, before being taken up by blacks, women and gays. The effect had been inexorably divisive.

But George fails to notice that this has everything to do with the growth of government. Groups will always try to harness resources and influence as long as there are large governments capable of apportioning it.

Then he quotes at length passages about the political process known as multiculturalism and the emergence of thought control. I agree, that is a real phenomenon. But again it has been created by state institutions. From the vast bureaucracy that patrols bogus human rights through to the education system. Ironically it was a representative of one of these, the Race Relations Conciliator, who appeared most reluctant to haul Harawira over the coals. Probably because he believes nonsensical edicts like Maori cannot be racist because they are an oppressed minority.

Political correctness or thought control has nothing to do with my revulsion at Harawira's sentiments. I find his views abhorrent because they allow no room for the freedom of individuals, which must surpass race and gender. Mr Harawira wants to practice oppression of his own children's freedom by restricting their choice of partner. Or he wants to instil in them his own enmity to Pakeha so they won't choose one as a partner. I can't find any excuse for it at all. On any grounds. And certainly not on Garth George's grounds.