I emphatically disagree with the proposition that ACT should once again try to tie their factions together. It shouldn't aim to be the "broad church" that is the National Party. It should declare itself economically and socially conservative. How hard is that?
Then those people who are ecomically conservative and socially liberal know where they stand and can act accordingly.
It still remains for those who reject ACT (or whatever Banks decides to call it) to form a new entity that does manage the differences that will inevitably arise because people are always somewhere along a spectrum. But there needn't be differences as gaping as those between people at opposite ends of the social spectrum.
It'll take goodwill, genuine compromise and committment to discipline. But I ask you, what else is left?
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28 comments:
Some of us don't want a bar of Statist, God-faring conservatism, and thought ACT was about Classical Liberalism?
Thankfully I voted Libz, otherwise I'd be so angry with myself at the moment.
ACT is dead, for good.
Good! Because it's a treacherous monster now. I hope the talk of a new freedom (as in classical liberal) party is right. I've probably never been so depressed by the State of New Zealand politics: Statists and collectivists are the only actors in parliament. No freedom to be found in the next three years.
I share the sentiment, Mark. I do.
Depressing, indeed.
Don choosing Banks has killed ACT. I hope there is a credible new non conservative libertarian party before 2014.
The problem with ACT (IMO)is the party has of latter years never been able to communicaite the"classical liberalism'message in terms that the hard working truck drivers of this country(or other hard working voters) can understand and resonate with.
Don...exactly! ACT failed to firstly define for itself what it stood for and really advocated,....and then totally failed to educate voters on that. ACT used to have book stalls at its events with hundreds of liberal titles on offer...and people bought them and minds were opened and changed....
If any new liberal party forms an educational outreach program must happen in lock step with it to make any progress in attracting people to it.
1400 votes is all you received and its 1400 votes more than you're worth.
As long as you keep misrepresenting Conservatives as a threat to freedom you will get no support, for this is a blatant and obvious lie and because of that it will always backfire on you.
The more you emphasize this untruth, the more people you piss off.
...and if you really do believe it to be the truth, then worse, as this signifies that you are unable to see things as they really are.
You're blinded by doctrine and bigotry, and who wants to elect those kind of delusional people to parliament?
Ask yourself why you cannot get any voting traction.
Ask yourself that question and write your answer here.
I say it is because of your insane pronunciations on what Conservatives are, and the promotion of the idea that Conservatives will "take away your freedom".
This is abject nonsense, and an obvious lie and does your cause far more harm than good.
The Conservatives in Canada have done more for freedom than any Canadian Party in decades.
You're full of bullshit, and you will never have any credibility or gain any public support as long as you carry these false accusers and vicious smearers you see above within your ranks.
Grow the fuck up, get rid of the smearers (especially those driven by bigotry that is rooted in their sexual identity) and you might have a show.
Otherwise, 1400 votes is all you're ever going to get. If you're lucky.
Redbaiter, what on earth is that about?
I think Redbaiter was referring Mark Hubbard's comment.
"Some of us don't want a bar of Statist, God-faring conservatism,"
Its about smears like this from people who really present as nothing much more than ignorant and or demented.
Red....On Kiwiblog YOU called for people to be hung from lampposts who disagreed with you...THAT'S the real conservative streak coming out....Liberals oppose that and all such evil and authoritarian positions.
Go do your thing with your control freak cronies and we will fight for liberty and rights in our own way...
Redbaiter, I just want my freedom from the State. Conservatism, with it's roots so deep in God and Country, is no more likely to give me that than the Left are, perhaps less so.
Conservatives represent the big brute state, not limited government, because they retain the right, by channeling God, to make some of the most important decisions that I, as an individual, will face in my life, such as, for example, euthanasia. This bunch of Conservatives are even worse: by resisting asset sales they believe the State should own the means of production: that makes them either stupid, or outright socialists.
I want a classical liberal society where I can do whatever I like, so long as I don't initiate force or fraud on you, yet, I suspect, you're very happy forcing your morality on me. The tone of your posts betray you, plus that's the modus operandi of the Conservatives.
Colin Craig has already said today that no merger between ACT and Conservatives can happen until ACT purges it's libertarian element: that is, purges the classical liberalism on which it was supposedly ruddy well founded. Say's it all, don't you think?
Now vomit out your ludicrous nonsense that because Libz only got 1,400 votes, they don't represent a valid, civilised and moral position. I hope one day you will learn that morality is not a matter of majority vote (mob rule). If just one persons knows that a cage is a cage, then it doesn't not become a cage by one million believing the reverse.
Mark, your comments are so relentlessly misinformed they indicate a real lack of critical thinking ability.
I am happy to be seen as a Conservative but have never been in a church in my life other than on special occasions, and am an agnostic.
I have lived among Christians and I have lived among secular Progressives like you.
I know from real experience which communities have provided me with the most overall freedoms, and it sure as damn hell was not the latter.
Here is a simple truth you seem determined not to understand-
You are free to adopt your own moral standards. Go ahead. Be whatever you like. I have no wish whatsoever to constrain you or advise you or limit your choices or do any of the things you say I do. Do whatever the fuck you like.
Here is what I will not do. I will not absolve you from my judgement. Furthermore, you have no right to demand I do that, or even worse, demand I approve of your moral choices.
For in so doing you are being as controlling as those you falsely claim to differ with.
Go form you damn dumb little nowhere party and stay the hell away from the Conservatives.
We will be taking down the state while you and your navel gazing pedantic semantic doctrinal Randian ilk will still be arguing over where the commas should appear in your party's founding constitution.
You won't even make the registration deposit, (as you failed to do once before) let alone get 1400 votes.
Thank you Redbaiter, and all your smears and contradictions, for being the poster boy/girl of why a freedom lover wouldn't have a bar of conservatism.
You say: You are free to adopt your own moral standards. Go ahead. Be whatever you like. I have no wish whatsoever to constrain you or advise you or limit your choices or do any of the things you say I do. Do whatever the fuck you like.
Great, but note that's a classical liberal ethic, certainly not conservative, and certainly not this Conservative party. Will you/they put through euthanasia legislation? And how can you say that, and then this:
Go form your damn dumb little nowhere party and stay the hell away from the Conservatives.
We will be taking down the state while you and your navel gazing pedantic semantic doctrinal Randian ilk will still be arguing over where the commas should appear in your party's founding constitution.
A number of questions:
1) Why, if you don't seek to bully me to your morality, do I get all the animosity in this statement? If you're leaving me alone, then you should leave me alone, right? At the moment I can hardly hear you as I'm having to stand so far off to avoid all your spitting.
2) Referring to NZ Conservatives, how, exactly, are they intending 'to take down the State', when Colin Craig won't even look at asset sales, and says to merge with ACT that party will have to purge it's classical liberalism. He's as much an interventionist in my life as Cunliffe would be.
In justifying the latter you'll either find you are a classical liberal, despite your vehemence to me (and classical liberalism), or, you'll find your contradictions are simply irresolvable, and thus, unlivable.
And a final question regarding your 1,400 votes, quip, again: if 954,000 people vote that you will be safe if you jump off that 1,000 metre cliff over there, do you think that will make it safe to do so? Do you then have the ability to broaden that principle out beyond the blob at the bottom of the cliff?
But chiefly, why all the raging into the night: you don't even know me?
Mark-
Your question No. 1 illustrates so well your basic problem, (mostly by your use of the word bullying), and the implication that you should not only be free to act according to your own moral standards, but that I should refrain from criticizing those standards.
In other words you are exampling exactly what Charley Reese has identified as the major contradiction in your claim to be a tolerant liberal.
You are not. You are authoritarian because you demand I "approve of your views", and call my strong disagreement bullying, when it isn't.
I'm not damn well bullying you. Bullying has as its most critical element the inability of the victim to escape his tormenter.
Your interaction with me is entirely voluntarily. Your use of the word "bullying" is just PC shit of the same kind that makes it mandatory for so called Libertarianz to call homosexuals "gays".
Just language perversion exactly the same as that employed by the propaganda fixated Reds.
By using the PC term "bully" in this inapplicable context you seek to cast me as a member of an "undesirable" or "unapproved" group (bullies) because I disagree with you.
As I have already said, this is a typical ploy of the left and it is authoritarian in its grounding.
As for your point no. 2, of course the Conservative Party has not dotted every I and crossed every T in the quest for ideological purity.
That is why we will be dismantling the state long before you have even got your constitution written. That is why you and your purist ilk (as I said at the beginning of this thread) must remain in your own party and stop destroying other parties with your unrealistic demands for perfection in every political aspect. Your idiotic fixation with the concept of "classical liberalism" made up of thoughts that run like water in whatever direction believers seek to tilt the ground.
As for your silly comments about cliff jumping, believe it or not this is a democracy and that is how it works. You won't change a thing without a vote and unless you are there in parliament battling against the watermelons and the racists and the statists you will not achieve SFA.
Again. Grow the fuck up.
Goodness me. This is certainly educational.
... and the implication that you should not only be free to act according to your own moral standards, but that I should refrain from criticizing those standards.
Never said that once. I said you should refrain from forcing your morality on me via legislation, which Conservatives have absolutely no compunction doing.
You are not. You are authoritarian because you demand I "approve of your views", and call my strong disagreement bullying, when it isn't.
I've not once demanded you approve my views. I've simply demanded a classical liberal society where your views, and your misplaced anger, venom, and bigoty can't, via legislation, intrude in my life.
I'm not damn well bullying you. Bullying has as its most critical element the inability of the victim to escape his tormenter.
Good one, so a Conservative government will allow me to move to voluntary taxation? And, again, will pass humane euthanasia legislation?
By using the PC term "bully" in this inapplicable context you seek to cast me as a member of an "undesirable" or "unapproved" group (bullies) because I disagree with you.
Third time, you've got to get yourself over this one. I don't seek your approval in any form at all. Just that you have no legislative influence over me, as in a classical liberal society.
In ending, not surprised to see you're a whole-hearted proponent of the tyranny of the majority. Though you missed my point, as usual, which was you can't make a truth of an untruth simply by getting a majority vote on it.
You're all over the show, just like Conservative policy is, indeed, full of contradictions. Go take a chill pill ... oh, wait a minute, you're a conservative - are you going to legalise drugs then? Course not, it was on that very topic John Banks single-handedly destroyed ACT.
I've got work to do. I'm done.
You're all over the show, just like Conservative policy is, indeed, full of contradictions.
I'm not actually. It is your limited political perspective that makes it seem that way to you.
Your understanding of other political views is naive, narrow and generally abysmal.
Is it? Mind you, the lovely thing about a classical liberal society, unlike, most probably, a big State one such as the Conservatives here still wish to run, or any other form of society, is I wouldn't need to know about any other political beliefs, as none of them could affect me, or my freedom. My freedom would be beyond the vote. I could just pursue my happiness unfettered by all that stuff. Now that would be a place to head for.
Your rhetoric is completely deranged, and its easy to see why ACT disintegrated and the Libertarianz have never amounted to a pinch of goat shit.
Why do you need a new party?
Why can't the Libertarianz exist as a vehicle for your "new" freedom party?
I'll tell you.
You know that as a political entity the Libertarian Party is a complete no-goer. You've wrecked that just as you wrecked ACT with your infantile need to parrot childish nonsense about statism and freedom at each other, pathetic internal bickering while the Labour/National coalition has grown larger than ever.
You're fooling yourself if you think a new party will solve your problems. Its just another delusion and will go the same way as ACT and the Libs for the same reasons.
You're all doctrinal idiots with no strategy and no idea about the real world. Either demented Objectivists or bigoted homosexuals whose ability to reason is completely out weighed by your ignorant and uninformed prejudices.
Start your new party. That's if you can find more than three people who will attain a 100% pass on the entrance exam.
Start your new party. Its a great idea because it will keep you the hell out of the way of the people who do have an idea how to improve things.
Ranting idiots with braindead mantras and clapped out dogma who have achieved nothing and will never in a century achieve anything more.
The Craig's Conservative Party is by any responsible definition Left of Centre. Muldoonist on economic policy and anyone who disagrees with their 'Fundy' social policy is destined (in Craig's mind at least) to the eternal fires of damnation.
Fascinating that Redbaiter has signed up to the rort waving his Confederate flag. Just visit the KKK or any US Neo-Nazi website and you will see any number of Redbaiter clones.
These clowns represent an extreme and repressive view of society where diversity is seen as a sin.
Freedom to think for yourself is a sin. Methinks they learned a thing or two from Stalin.
If Redbaiter is to be the public face of the so called (and misnamed) Conservative Party then I suggest that Mr Craig would be better served giving his money to charity rather than see it crash and burn.
Sigh
So The Veteran comes along to disgrace those who fought against communists in Asia with his usual cowardly lies.
As a veteran, you should have a lot more pride and integrity, and not be seen to be acting like the cowardly guttersnipe you do.
I usually admire such men, but you with your disgraceful yellow backed behavior (such as labeling Conservatives as Nazis) do them all a sad disservice.
If I had to, I could forgive you for betraying the original National Party principles, but its much harder to overlook your smearing of the public integrity of true fighters against Communism.
And Mark, it is always a good pointer in observing who might be right about something by noticing who turns up to help who. Notice how this disgusting National Party flunky is fighting against me and for you?
This loser has been one of the prime movers in taking National far to the left of what Labour was at the time he was in Vietnam.
He fought against them in Vietnam when ordered to, but is so devoid of the ability to reason, and so ignorant politically, he has since done all he could to help the reds white ant our country like never before.
That this poor misguided fool is for you and against Redbaiter should tell any person able to reason who is right here.
Red, if you didn't avoid every attempt at reasoning with personal attacks, perhaps you may have come out looking on top, but you look desperate and misguided, with not the foggiest idea how to retort to claims about your contradictions.
The contradictions are obvious to anyone looking, address them before anything else, because at the moment everything after them is just a joke.
Redbaiter again attacking the person rather than the argument. That is why he/she is permanently red carded from my blog.
And btw I did not label those who voted Conservative Neo Nazi. Read the f*****g post.
I repeat again that that the so called Conservative Party is conservative in name only. Their policy positions are almost indistinguishable from that of Winston First and if I were Craig I would be talking to Winston.
"you look desperate and misguided, with not the foggiest idea how to retort to claims about your contradictions."
Hamish, please try and get over this hump. I am not the slightest bit interested in how I "look" to you. Obviously, unless you have a comment to make that adds to the argument, you're nothing but a spiteful and intellectually stunted little prig.
Why, given the content of your post, would I see you differently?
Please, just try and argue with an authentic counterpoint and keep your worthless judgements on the value of the content to yourself. At the moment, they dominate your input.
When I go to the Conservative website I see three main policies - law and order, referenda and drugs and alcohol. I largely agree with the first, I don't agree with the second, and the third is about restricting the choices of people to do as they wish when they have no impact on others.
To me a successor to ACT would probably agree on most of the first, may or may not agree on the second, and would take a different tack on the third issue, whilst pushing the same spending cut message that is on the website.
There is no point to having an objectivist party, and it is clear Libz cannot get sufficient traction with policies to cut the state back to the core as it stands. So something new, that is consistent in direction, is what is sought.
For me the most important issues are education and property rights, and that any party should advance reducing state control of schools and education generally. That will do far more to start confronting the collectivist/statist bias that is blighting the current generation than anything else. We have to think Gramsci, and use the techniques of the left to fight them.
"Please, just try and argue with an authentic counterpoint and keep your worthless judgements on the value of the content to yourself. At the moment, they dominate your input."
This was my exact point, it wasn't easily missed was it? I guess you're opinion is so clouded you couldn't possibly see a valid point that doesn't agree with you though.
I think ACT should focus on lowering taxes, reducing the size of government, supporting property rights and the right to self defence, using the private sector to increase choice in health and education, and ending open-ended non-targeted welfare. Anybody disagree with that? No? Then stop worrying about all this social libertarian conservative crap and get on with it.
and in this regard then, perhaps in years to come we will view these last 3 years of ACT as being a big success
the biggest and best thing, which beats the personal tax cuts from 39% to 33%, that ACT have done is end compulsory membership of student unions
ends much of the campus "funding" of future Mana, Green, Labour "leaders" (power hungry control freaks), and future NZders 10 years down the track will be saved from at least a few of them
For the next 3 years, ACT/Banks should try push for something which has a similar long-term underlying positive impact on freedom.
Blair you imply that that is all that Act should focus on, so yes, I do disagree with you.
My personal freedoms are worth far more to me than economic ones, they overlap frequently, but I would rather have a 50% income tax and be able to do whatever I like than to pay none and live in oppression, only able to do what redbaiter and his ilk think I should do. For example.
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