From the latest Salvation Army Report entitled
The Growing Divide, this appears on the first page:
‘A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.’
GREEK PROVERB
That must mean something about the older generation acting in the interests of the younger I guess. Don't they? Parents do it all the time. And even governments try I think to improve the lives of future generations. I am not saying they succeed but are nevertheless generally well-intentioned. But by inference, the Sallies don't think so. At least not about National. The report refers to the current government as having no "moral authority", brave (or foolish) for an outfit that gets a good part of its funding from the government. If the government has no moral authority should it be using taxpayer money to fund the Salvation Army? This is what the report says:
Given how close the election result actually was, what sort of mandate can Mr Key now
claim? In pure political terms he can now begin to limit welfare entitlements and to sell
off public assets, even though fewer than 35% of eligible voters actually supported his party
and his plans.
The problem that Mr Key and any other Prime Ministers elected with such a limited mandate
have is not about power, but about legitimacy. They simply do no have the moral authority
to exercise sweeping changes because the majority of people—either by dissent or by
absence—have not given this to them.
8 comments:
I love the Sallies.
However they often avoid the obvious which is taking more personal responsibility. The more you give the more shall be expected.
Their report remains the same every year and is somewhat disappointing in continuing to lay blame.
I know we live in an "All Black" country which is personified in our continual negative thinking. I would hope year by year that something positive can come out but no - purely negative as that appears to be what the media and others sell.
Go the Sallies - you are doing a wonderful job. We only support one organisation in New Zealand and you can guess who that is.
I don't love the Sallies. The same buggers who paid off to avoid scandal involving a paedophile.
Do gooders that deserve to be ignored.
This is the church that is virulently anti-gay but (as Manolo says) has its own closet full of sex abuse allegations; that believes women should be married off at a very young age and never work; that preaches those of other faiths (including other Christian ones) are damned to hell; and shows all the other characteristics of an extreme, fundamentalist cult. And they have the gall to question the National Party's morality? What bloody hypocrites!
So the Sallies say that the National government has "no moral authority".
I wonder if they will say the same thing if Labour get into power next election (probably with only about 35% of the vote)?
Of course they won't.
They are perfectly right: an MMP parliament where bludgers and codgers vote has no legitimacy.
Now have an executive president elected every ten years by nett taxpayers only abs you'd have a forceful string government.
strong. Strong Government.
We do not live in a great country.
New mega stores are cutting down the trees as fast as the ink is drying on their contracts?
The government doesn't have a moral authority for almost everything it does, this, for example, however, the problem is under democracy people have come to associate majority vote, with morality - unfortunately, the two aren't even related. Morality can only be found where government sticks to protecting the rights of individuals, and not assuming the responsibilities of those individuals, that is, the classical liberal society, or what I want, the constitutional libertarian minarchy.
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