We should show her views and those who champion vengeance over mercy the contempt they deserve, they have no enlightenment, just the boorish bruise of the very barbarism they claim to recoil from.
THE NEW ZEALAND LEFT is not alone in being torn apart by what should and should not be tolerated. Only yesterday, the British Labour Leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was publicly upbraided for being “an antisemitic racist” by Margaret Hodge, a senior British Labour MP. Hodge was furious that Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) has refused to accept, in full, the definition of antisemitism issued by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
The media is alive this week with the fall-out from Donald Trump’s visit to Europe. The snubs, the diplomatic faux-pas, the treatment of Theresa May, and NATO, and everyone (except Vlad-the-Lad). So much news to report, so many issues. Oh yes, and then the Great Reversal, where Trump said he said ‘would’ but meant ‘wouldn’t’. His performance at that press conference was odd; while he lies all the time, this time you could hear the lie in his voice.
Another home goal by a Government who seem to think their problem is a lack of ‘gender intelligence’ in selling their ideas, and not basic strategic competence. Isn’t it time someone called back in Matt McCarten? Hasn’t he been punished enough and isn’t this incompetence starting to hurt?
Why let the war mongers dictate the narrative? Why not have a leader who can articulate a vision of co-operation in the Pacific challenge that narrative by being direct in our criticism while inclusive in our solutions?
I think what the NZ Police meant to say was…
Those who would weaponise difference and seed resentment require brutality, civility is a guard against that. I’m not saying turn the other cheek when a Nazi strikes you, confusing civility with refusing self-defence isn’t a solution, but by strangling off freedom of speech, we only add to their cause, we don’t counter it.
Nothing could be more helpful to the cause of the Right than a Left which has lost its faith in the people. What, after all, is more likely to cause the people to lose faith in the Left than a nagging suspicion that their self-appointed liberators regard them as being either too vicious or too stupid to grasp the arguments in favour of individual freedom and social justice without instruction from above?
In this environment progressive New Zealanders must fight for free speech in every arena possible but this does not include defending “rights” of anyone to promote racist or religious hatred which smooths the path to fascism.
Ineffective Union Leadership + self-saucing member militancy on social media = bad times for Jacinda.