Paying for views you oppose

One of the chief evils of offices of political advocacy is that taxpayers opposed to views which they hold to be wrong-headed, destructive or plain vicious are required, nonetheless, to dip into their pockets and pay for bureaucrats to promote those views.  Paid political activists whose time is paid for by their opponents – what could be more outrageous!

Latest example of this outrage is a magazine issued by the Families Commission which fiercely upholds the power of  government employees to enter your home and tell you how to discipline your children.  While Families Commissioner Christine Rankin has been told by her bosses to keep her mouth shut on matters pertaining to the anti-smacking referendum, you and I and and the opponents of the anti-smacking legislation are having our pockets picked to pay for advocacy which we oppose.  Advocates like Bob McCoskrie of Families First and his supporters are required to find the money to promote the “No” vote campaign, while all the while being required to up the tab for their opponents as well.

Such is the evil of offices of political advocacy like the Families Commission, which opposes the sanctity of the family, or the Children’s Commissioner, which under Cindy Kiro favours the nationalisation of children.

Into this debate steps Stephen Franks, arguing that things have gone so far that it is time to consider the heresy of “a new publicly funded agency to remedy failure in the marketplace of ideas”: an Office of Devil’s Advocacy – and office paid to provide opposition to the paid political advocates of the “dreary anointed.”

Sounds like a job I might enjoy – if, that is, I could stomach the heresy of picking my opponents’ pockets to pay for the unpalatable advocacy I’d be required to promote.  :-)

LIBERTARIAN SUS: Fighting Fire with Fire

Susan Ryder is fighting fire with fire . . .

Sit back and relax because I’m going to tell you a wee story. It took place in mid-town Manhattan, on a Saturday afternoon in the summer of 1986.

I lived an hour away in neighbouring Connecticut and had dinner plans in the city that evening, so had gone in earlier to do some shopping. As it transpired, I ended up with time to kill and noticed that the newly-released film A Room with a View was showing at a theatre on Central Park adjacent to The Plaza Hotel, the timing of which suited perfectly.

I ducked in seconds before it started to find the theatre about two-thirds full, with plenty of spare seats. I selected one in the middle of an empty row of seven or eight not too far from the entrance.

A good twenty minutes into the film, the door opened and a chap ambled in. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him search for a seat. Passing numerous vacancies en route, he made a beeline for my row and sat directly to my right.

I was instantly wary. You see, that never happens. In public places, people do not sit next to strangers if there are other seats to be had. This man had his pick of vacant seats - blocks of them - and yet he chose one right beside an unaccompanied female.

There was every reason to be uncomfortable. Everything about him screamed out of place. He smelled badly and his appearance was decidedly unkempt. More than that though, he showed no interest in the film. I decided the best course of action was to ignore him as I would any other patron.

But I couldn’t. Even though I was staring straight ahead at the screen, I could sense him staring at me and it was no longer creepy, but scary, particularly as he was sitting very close and to make matters worse (for me), I was wearing shorts. So to create a physical barrier between us, I made quite a production of transferring my several bags of shopping from my left to my right, while shifting my weight as far as I could to the left, hoping like hell that he would take the hint.

He didn’t. He just kept staring and leaning towards me breathing audibly while I became more and more agitated. I was watching the screen but seeing nothing. My mind was racing, my pulse was throbbing and I was trying hard not to panic. All manner of scenarios were flooding my mind. What would I do when the movie finished? Would he follow me out of the theatre? Perhaps I could run straight into The Plaza for help? This was pre-Giuliani New York City after all, when crime was endemic.

To this day I’m not exactly sure what happened next but I think I felt a hand on my leg. I say “think” because by that point I was so keyed up I may have imagined it. No matter – I’d had enough, anyway. I made a split decision and let rip.

I turned to look him straight in the eye and yelled at the top of my voice “Stop it right now! And get out this minute!!”

That did it. His eyebrows shot up and he jumped up in shock. And then he ran for his life. He was up the aisle and out the door before I could tell him to bugger off a second time. It’s strange how your mind’s eye is capable of seeing things in slow motion that in reality happen quickly. In the blink of an eye, the power base had shifted and I was in control. The victim had turned victor – and the bully didn’t like it one little bit.

I was reminded about that with the weekend news that “bullying was rife in New Zealand schools” - note the use of the collective once again - and that authorities were “discussing measures.” Expecting nothing of use then, the Children’s Commissioner, (no stranger to futility), still managed to beggar belief with the suggested solution to “stagger the lunchtimes.”

Te Kiro can suspend the lunchtimes altogether if she wants to, but nothing will change. Nasty little bastards will still behave like nasty little bastards before, during and after class. And that’s ignoring technology that has created a whole new sphere of 24 hour text-torture.

Bullying is as old as prostitution. It’s not new -- it’s just nastier thanks largely to policies of appeasement by the usual suspects. There's a time-honoured tradition of dealing with bullying, and that's to meet it head on.  The usual suspects can hand-wring and chest-clutch all they like to no avail. Knock it on the head, hard.  It's the only thing that has ever worked.

Bullies know exactly what they're doing.  My heart goes out to the poor little mites they choose to terrorise ... and delight in doing so. And as for the usual claptrap about bullies and backgrounds, well, if nowhere else they’d soon learn to at least behave at school. I’m over the excuses.

I don’t enjoy making scenes; I don’t know anyone who does. I certainly didn’t that afternoon in New York with everybody in the theatre turning to stare after I shouted. But desperate situations call for desperate measures and there is little more important than one’s personal safety. The measure I chose did the trick and ten seconds later everyone was back watching the film and my problem had vanished.

I was taught that bullies were cowards at heart. Stand up to them and they usually dissolve. I sure as hell wasn’t going to tolerate that loser picking on me for his own screwed-up pleasure because he (wrongly) deduced that I was an easy target.

I wonder if he ever tried it again. One thing’s for sure: just like the school bully given a dose of his own medicine, he’d certainly think twice before doing so.

Cindy Kiro et al might like to think about that, too. Twice, if need be.

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Murder? It's not OK.

You can be sure that when another blogger calls you "intelligent and engaging," there's bound to be a catch -- and in Russell Brown's latest post, there sure is:  "I personally like Peter Cresswell: he is an engaging and intelligent man," he begins.  And then the knives come out:

Unfortunately, he is also an Objectivist libertarian, which means he will often go off on ideologically-motivated rants that enjoy all the internal consistency of your average tantrum.

Fortunately for me, the knives in this case are just metaphorical.  I say that because five Aucklanders and their families and friends are less fortunate than I -- five people including Austin Hemmings have died from real knife attacks in Auckland city since mid-July -- not to mention Darnell Leslie, stabbed to death in Invercargill on Saturday.  Darnell Leslie was the fifty-first New Zealander to die at the hand of another New Zealander since the start of this year.

Russell's metaphorical knife is out for me however because in saying on Friday it is time to take a stand over the flood of violence that so far this year has cost fifty-one New Zealanders their lives I am "channeling the spirit of Leighton Smith" -- and out there in the People's Republic of Grey Lynn & Pt Chevalier, no greater crime exists.

I made the "mistake" of saying that the one thing governments are legitimately supposed to be doing is protecting New Zealanders from crime and violence -- when it's manifestly clear this government is not doing that, and has no focus on doing that. 

I committed the sin of pointing out that the primary focus of law and order should not be protection for criminals, but protection from criminals,  -- and aside from criminalising good parents, the focus of our local law enforcement has been more on revenue collection than it has been on barring physical force from social relationships.

I summoned up my inner frighfulness to ask, "Will the random, violent, bloodthirsty stabbing of a man in central Auckland last night be the final straw? Is that enough, finally, to make you sit up and say 'No more!'"

And I had the temerity to quote Susan the Libertarian, actually talking to Leighton Smith: "Is this enough to pierce your apathy?" she asked his listeners.  If not this, then what?

What indeed.

Fifty-one people killed at the hands of other people this year is clearly not enough to pierce the apathetic hide of the Grey Lynn and Wadestown apparatchiks, who think (if they think about it at all) that wringing their hands and crying "It's not OK, eh" will be all that's needed to stop the bloodshed -- and if that doesn't work, that covering their eyes with metaphorical hoodies will at least help to keep the bloodshed out of sight.

Since it's my Objectivism that apparently animates my own ideologically-motivated animus to people being killed, and Russell thinks it's "not clear what Cresswell is proposing here," let's see what Objectivism has to say about all this. "The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may initiate the use of physical force against others."  Who could object to that?  "No man—or group or society or government—has the right to assume the role of a criminal and initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man," said Ayn Rand.  "If physical force is to be barred from social relationships, men need an institution charged with the task of protecting their rights under an objective code of rules.

    This is the task of a government—of a proper government—its basic task, its only moral justification and the reason why men do need a government.
    A government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of physical force under objective control—i.e., under objectively defined laws."

Sounds clear enough, doesn't it:  Initiating physical force against others is wrong. It's a crime.  Government's primary task is stopping it, without initiating force in the process.  Who could possibly object?  Well, apparently Russell Brown does. Despite  a clarification in the comments for a reader  ("Nowhere at all," I say "have I suggested that the role of police is to walk around and follow each and every individual, so they can clap them in cuffs the moment they step out of line"), he wonders nonetheless what it all means.

Does this mean the suspension of habeas corpus, he asks. An expansion of police enforcement and surveillance so prodigious as to guarantee an officer's intervention?  A policeman at every dinner table?  Well, no -- although a policeman would probably be better company than the likes of Peter Williams QC, who's never seen a criminal without simultaneously envisioning a paycheck. And a policeman in every home -- or at least a bureaucrat with a clipboard -- is the wet dream of both Sue Bradford and Cindy Kiro.

What it does mean however is removing the scales (and the hoodies) from one's eyes, and urgently recognising that the focus of the law and the number one job of government -- its only moral justification -- is the protection of you from me, and me from you. 

Which means apprehending and vilifying criminals, not attacking their victims. 

Which means focusing on crimes with actual victims, not on victimless crimes that fill up NZ's prisons with people whose only crime is harming themselves. 

Which means recognising that the rise of violent crime (up 12.5% since last year) is the backfire of collectivism -- that paying several generations of New Zealanders to have children they don't want has not been a recipe for happy families, but for people who see their primary means of survival as other people, and whole suburbs in which that ethic is daily acted out. 

Which means recognising that every New Zealander has the right to defend themselves, and the concomitant right to possess the means thereof.

Which means taking burglary and other property-related offences seriously, so that more bad law isn't needed to fix bad sentencing; so that those criminals who start with property crime don't learn the messages early on that they may obtain financial values  from others by resorting to physical force; so that they don't learn that the word "justice" is always preceded with the words "revolving door."

What it does mean in short is recognising that if the legitimate arms of government are to protect innocent people from others who think force is the means by which humans deal with one another -- in other words, if the police, the law courts and the prisons are going to do their proper job -- then they need to protect those who value their life, liberty, property and happiness from those who've shown beyond reasonable doubt that they're quite partial to taking them all away.  ("The rights of the accused are not a primary," points out Ayn Rand, "they are a consequence derived from a man’s inalienable, individual rights. A consequence cannot survive the destruction of its cause.")  That's the only reason to lock people up, isn't it: to protect us, not to rehabilitate (or even to punish) them. 

Let me repeat it again: The primary focus of law and order and the sole moral justification for government is to bar force from social relationships.  The protection of our individual rights. If criminals show they have no intention of respecting others' rights, then the law should have no compunction in taking away theirs.  This is manifestly not the primary focus of the present government, but nor has it been of any real interest to most of its predecessors.

While some people prefer to avert their eyes from all the carnage, and to make fun of the likes of Garth McVicar -- one of the few New Zealanders to speak up for victims instead of for those who've done them over -- those who feel threatened are on the march.  It's the measure of a community's desperation in the face of crime, for example, that ten-thousand people marched in South Auckland's bad weather recently to demand their fundamental right to protection from criminals to be upheld.  But where the self-anointed once joined, supported and promoted marches against violence -- the likes of the "Reclaim the Night" marches, for example, were once a safe way for lefties to meet their future partners -- now they're content to sit at home in their own safe suburbs while chuckling cynically at the desperation that would motivate someone like Manukau's Peter Low to contemplate employing Triads to provide protection, anything to make their streets safer than they are now!

While the police fiddle and the self-anointed smirk, the possibilities of lynch mobs emerges from the shadows.  Look too, for example, at the gobs of support given to a Manurewa man when he stabbed and killed a tagger not so long ago -- and for the most part the support came from those who claim to be against such violence.

Such is the measure of people's desperation.  They want protection; they're not getting it.

So what's to be done right now?  For some people, I suspect the difficulty of doing something means they draw the line at doing anything. As it happens, however, I gave some sort of a prescription in a post earlier this year on Curing South Auckland, one of the places in which no-one can ignore the very real rising tide of violence that threatens to destroy the place. Here they are, in summary:

1. A police force that protects the innocent.  One that has the tools and the people to do the job, but more importantly has the knowledge, training and backup -- and the will -- to use them (which means promoting people like former Senior Sergeant Anthony Solomona, not sacking them.)
2. A justice system that takes the guilty off the streets. Rudy Guiliani's successful 'Broken Windows' policy is a guide: start with the small crimes, where failure to punish leads offenders into bigger crimes, and put these right first.  (And remember that justice isn't about retribution, it's about protecting the rest of us.)
3. Hold parents accountable in law for the offences of their children.  You have them, you take responsibility for what and whom they destroy.
4. Stop paying no-hopers to breed. We are forced by government to pay people to have children they don't want. The result of all those unwanted children appears on the front page of our newspapers nearly every day.
5. Have an education system that gives youngsters the tools for life -- that teaches each of them, not how fit in and how to follow (which is all the present factory schools teach them), but how to use the brain they are born with, and how to use it to give themselves wings instead of shackles.
6. Perhaps most important of all is this, which is much, much harder: work towards towards the destruction of what tennis ace Chris Lewis calls 'the crab-bucket mentality,' the hatred of achievement with which young South Aucklanders shackle themselves and damn their more successful brothers, and instead of the 'warrior values' of dependency and conflict and renunciation that are all many young South Aucklanders see, promote instead a philosophy of individualism that offers genuinely life-affirming values to which to aspire ...

No one, including me, says it's going to be easy to turn things round. But just because it's difficult to do something doesn't mean doesn't mean that one should support doing nothing.

UPDATE: Russell points to crime figures that he says shows there's nothing to worry about, "something that has always been apparent to anyone prepared to look up the numbers: Crime rocketed in the 1970s and has been trending down since."  However, something really is apparent to those prepared to look beyond the headlines, even the one to which he links.  "Reported crime was steady at around two crimes a year for every 100 people from 1900 until about 1970," says the psychiatrist quoted, "and then climbed steeply to peak at 13 crimes per 100 in 1992." If you believe the headline, that was then and this is now.  But how about now?  For the last four years crime figures, according to the psychiatrist, have "levelled out" at 10 crimes for every 100 people. 

For Russell et al, that's nothing to worry about.  It means all is fine and dandy.  Essentially violent crimes and homicide shot up in the mid-eighties, and have failed ever since to come down, but as long as he and his friends can point to graphs showing the Red Team did less badly than the Blue Team there's nothing for anyone to worry about -- expect perhaps for those 1 in 10 people who've been victims of the crimes people say we shouldn't be worried about.

And in fact, to be precise, if we actually did look up the numbers, we'd see that violent crime in New Zealand is not so easy to dismiss. New Zealand scored highly earlier this year in an international crime survey.

New Zealand scored highest for thefts from cars, second highest for burglary, fifth highest for assaults, 10th highest for robbery and 11th highest for theft of personal property and for sexual assaults against women in The International Crime Victims Survey. The survey compared 30 countries in 2004 and 2005.

And we'd see too that levels of violent crime are not "levelling off" at all.  There were 127.1 per 10,000 violent crimes recorded last year in the official figures, and the trend since 1999 has been up, not down!

                          

Which means the figures provide no grounds at all for back slapping complacency.

UPDATE: Callum McPetrie points out "The underlying factor, behind the government's size and the sanction of criminals, is political correctness, fuelled by the moral equivalency of modern philosophical and political thought.

It's the idea that the murderer is the true victim of an 'oppressive society,' and that the man who was murdered deserved it ... If he gets stabbed or shot, moral equivalency says: 'So what?' "

And the Prime Minister says, "It's the victim's fault"!.

Don't ban force

It became obvious over the last few years to anyone with a brain that a vast number of people in positions of political power were absolutely unable to discriminate between smacking and beating

For the likes of Sue Bradford and Children's Commissioner Cindy Kiro, a firm open-handed smack on a child's bottom is no different than a beating delivered with a vacuum cleaner pipe or a piece of 4"x2".

So much for Ms Bradford's and Ms Kiro's ability to discriminate.

They provided further evidence of this mote in both eyes over the weekend, showing themselves utterly unable to determine any difference between a child initiating force against another child, and a teacher using force in defence of of that child -- ie., between violence, which is never justified, and retaliatory force, which is our right. [For more on the difference, see my 'Cue Card' on Force.]

When "top youth aid cop" Inspector Chris Graveson quite properly -- and in the current cultural climate, courageously -- pointed out that  "Teachers should not be afraid to 'man-handle' violent children if they pose immediate risks [to others], even if it means leaving bruising,"  Bradford and her confreres were ready to pounce.

    "You hear people saying, `You can't touch children. You can't do this, you can't do that'.  (But) if a child's being attacked, you're duty-bound to intervene," Graveson said at a New Zealand Educational Institute seminar in Wellington on Friday...

To which Bradford responded: "Teachers can use force to stop a child from causing harm to themselves and others [and I'm sure they're grateful for the Bradford/Key/Clark Act limiting that force] ... But what concerns me with the comments from the police officer is you can use force up to the level of bruising the child.  That might lead to some teachers using what I would consider unreasonable force."

And education minister Chris Carter responded: "There are policies to deal with disruptive and violent children... The problem with what the officer has said is he's taken a broad-brush approach to what is actually very specific and rare cases."

And the Office of the Children's Commissioner  responded that "it was never appropriate to bruise a child."

Never?  As the Timaru Herald asks, are they in the real world, these people? How will a "policy" help Hemi when Hone's beating him over the head with a chair?  How can it be "never appropriate" to drag Johnny off Jemima with peremptory force when he's beating her to a pulp (and as Graveson points out, "Serious sexual offenders as young as 12, who would be labelled paedophiles if they were adults, [for] preying on young victims")? 

How could one ever think it "unreasonable" to protect young victims from the classroom bullies and thugs who would take them over if the "sense" that Kiro and Carter and Bradford exhibit ever became too common.

The point is this: it's not just desirable to discriminate between force and defensive force -- between coercion and self-defence -- it's essential. Indeed, as Ayn Rand points out, it's the very basis of a rational politics:

Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. The ethical principle involved is simple and clear-cut: it is the difference between murder and self-defense. A holdup man seeks to gain a value, wealth, by killing his victim; the victim does not grow richer by killing a holdup man. The principle is: no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force.

Don't ban force, ban the initiation of force -- because by making retaliatory force illegal, all you do is increase the violence.

See the history of pacifism for countless examples -- like this one.

Child abuse needs urgent action

In reaction to the wave of brutality on children since the start of this year, a litany of horror itemised on the front page of today's Herald under the news that a four-month-old Papakura baby is on life support after "non accidental" head injuries, Children's Commissioner Cindy Kiro says "a lot of the problem came back to how the abusive parents were raised themselves.  It is time something is done," she says, "to ensure we get it right for the next generation."

She's right of course.  Something must be done.  Urgently.  Three deaths and multiple cases of brutality since January this year -- atrocities that parents and step-parents are inflicting on their own children -- shows that whatever is being done now is not only not working to protect children, it's actively putting hem in harm's way. 

Something must be done.

The first thing that must be done follows from the fact that Kiro and her predecessors have used their office not to advance the cause of children, but for the sole purpose of grasping every opportunity to advance the nationalisation of New Zealand children.  Her office should be be disestablished forthwith.

The second thing that must happen follows from the failure of Sue Bradford and John Key's anti-smacking law to do anything at all to arrest the tidal wave of brutality, which is its immediate abolition and the return of  the power of honest discipline of their offspring to good New Zealand parents -- who are being punished for the sins of the few without the few themselves even feeling the effect.

The third thing that should happen follows from identifying the nature of those who are predominantly killing their children, which is predominantly children who kill their own children, i.e., people who are paid by taxpayers to have children they don't want , who kill those unwanted children with barely a moment's reflection -- and sometimes pause to eat McDonalds as they head off to hospital to drop off the bodies. 

The overarching answer is obvious: It's time to stop paying no-hopers to breed.  Here's how to do it.

UPDATE:  Liberty Scott points out there's a few more things that need to be done, in addition to the cessation of paying no-hopers to breed.

Wake up New Zealand

New blog on the blogroll is Lance Davey's Back Off, "A temporary organization formed for the express purpose of uniting likeminded freedom lovers under one pro-freedom banner to march on parliament and deliver a message to the incumbent and future governments of New Zealand... One day, one protest, every freedom loving New Zealander, outside parliament, telling that bitch Nanny State to "Back Off!"

Commy Kids Commissar 'Surveillance' Cindy Kiro reminds us once again why such a march might be necessary. Head over to Back Off! and get involved. That's an order.

UPDATE: Lance has a downloadable flyer to copy, print and distribute. It's good, and it's here.

The full Honiss

A good referee should barely be noticed. Not so Paul Honiss. Referee Paul Honiss is always noticed -- every damn game he's in. He enjoys the authority. He's the Cindy Kiro of referees. Rugby writer Chris Hewett at The (UK) Idependent noticed him and his bloody whistle in the W. Samoa v South Africa game, and he wasn't impressed. His performance, says Hewett,

plumbed depths previously unvisited by officials at a World Cup, including his good self. And he has a fair bit of history in this regard, does Honiss.

He does. He's a sawdust Caesar with a whistle. It's a pity he still disgraces the game.

Stalinist Cindy's promise: An apparatchik in every home

A surveillance system of New Zealand parents proposed by 'Surveillance Cindy' -- the Stalinist Children's Commissar -- will see clipboard wielding Stasis examining every family in the country against criteria set by Cindy Kiro and her children's commissariat.

This is fully consistent with the mentality that "we" are to blame for parents who kill their kids. According to this view it takes a village to kill a child, and it takes 'Surveillance Cindy' and her fellow Commissars to ignore the killers and instead unleash upon good families an avalanche of apparatchiks bearing a presumption of guilt and a clipboard -- delivering a welfare cheque on every plate, and an apparatchik in every home.

The apparatchiks would assume you're mistreating your children, unless you could prove otherwise. Show them the "wrong" video games, the "wrong" books, or discipline them the "wrong" way, and you go on report.

As Liberty Scott reports it's disgraceful that it's taken the mainstream media all of eleven months to notice Surveillance Cindy's Orwellian plan. Says Scott,

I reported on this atrocious proposal in October LAST YEAR. It's not NEWs, it's just that the standards of journalism in NZ are often shockingly low.

^

And what's the headline in the Dominion Post? "$5m-a-year to save our our children" [sic]. I don't care if it is $5 million, $50 million, $5 billion or $50 - THAT isn't the story Keri Welham.

The headline should be "Shades of Orwell in plan to cut child abuse."

I was heartened to see yesterday's response from Mitch Lees, the organiser of last year's anti-anti-smacking rally, and now the CEO of Lindsay Perigo's Sense of Life Objectivists:

SOLO Slams Commie Kids Commissioner: "The suggestion that EVERY baby's home must be checked is an indication that Commie Kiro has no idea – or is willfully ignoring – where the real problem lies. Monitoring every home ... promises to be a gigantic waste of taxpayer funds. Funds that would be far better spent on preventing, punishing and sterilising the Kahui twin killers of this world," says Lees.

"Child abuse in New Zealand is not 'our' problem, it is the problem of the few unspeakable trash who commit and permit the abuse. Focusing on the whole population only serves to muddy the waters as to who is responsible for these disgraceful actions, allowing more innocent children to be killed in the meantime..

How can you hope to solve a problem, if you can't (or won't) even identify its cause?

"Instead of unjustly assuming that every parent is a criminal in a desperate attempt to not call a spade a spade, authorities need to concentrate their resources on preventing the real threats to children. Taking $5million of taxpayer's money and using it to brazenly intrude on our privacy serves as a strong indication that it is time for Nanny to accompany the child killers to the gallows."

Given that Plunket have been doing for years Kiro claims to be doing with her Stasi scheme, but doing it efficiently and voluntarily and largely on a user-pays basis, it now becomes obvious why the Clark Government's have chosen to have Plunket gutted.

This isn't about good parenting, it's once again about increased state control. I reminded you before that Sue Bradford's anti-smacking bill was about more than just smacking; as Cindy Kiro has indicated clearly enough, their programme hass always been about nationalising children.

When will you wake up?

UPDATE 1: Who's coming out swinging on this? Bob McCoskrie, who says Children's Commissioner Promotes Nanny State. Leighton Smith. Whale Oil. Crusader Rabbit. Lindsay Mitchell:

Can we have some perspective here. Most mothers already willingly let Plunket into their homes. Forcing those who don't to accept state interference is enough to make them go underground.

And here's Libertarianz' Peter Osborne:

"Children's Commissioner Cindy Kiro has again shown that her position exists not to defend child wellbeing, but as a mere political tool," proclaimed Peter Osborne, Libertarianz Social Welfare Spokesman.... "

"As with the anti-smacking bill, this recommendation will do nothing to stop people from abusing their children. People must ask, 'why have such abusive or apathetic adults given birth in the first place? And why in such large numbers?' The reason is because Nanny State forces us all to subsidise such families. She has also regulated our everyday lives to such an extent that opportunities to provide the means for self-sufficiency have become almost impossible to find. Unbelievably, New Zealand keeps voting for the status quo!"

Spineless appeasers John Key and David Farrar, meanwhile, both have a bob each way.

UPDATE 2: I'm pleased to hear Willie Jackson and John Tamihere come out in their afternoon show against Surveillance Cindy's proposal for universal monitoring, albeit somewhat tepidly. Rather than the one-size-kicks-all nannying proposed by Commissar Kiro, Willie and JT suggest "targeting" the nannying. A caller to the show points out the reason neither Cindy nor the Clark Government would go near the idea of targeting: it's the brown question again, isn't it; the knowledge that the child abuse that Cindy claims to be countering is overwhelmingly happening in brown households (as Lindsay Mitchell reports, "the rate of abuse for Maori children is around three times higher," while pointing out that "child deaths due to maltreatment are decreasing.")

So that is the real elephant in the room that Cindy and her supporters and most of maoridom refuse to recognise, and that targeting would highlight.

UPDATE 3: Cactus Kate proposes some targeting of her own:

It makes far more sense to visit the homes of beneficiaries to make sure they aren't having sex.

UPDATE 4: An important new announcement from Dr Zen Tiger:

The NZ Government today signed off sponsorship for a $30 million dollar NGO titled the CFC. The Commission for Commissioners is charged with maintaining the well being of all people serving as Commissioners in this country. The Director of this newly funded organisation, Dr Zen Tiger, said:

"New Zealand has taken a major step forward in human rights by ensuring advocacy for Commissioners. It is a fact that some Commissioners do not have the same advantages as others, but this is not always obvious. Therefore, I have launched a plan that will ensure EVERY commissioner has a lifetime plan, with life time monitoring."

Dr Tiger's full plan is detailed here: Leave No Commissioner Behind.

Sack the social workers

It's all our fault. Lowlifes being paid to produce children they don't want are killing them, abusing them, hitting them around the head with bats and pieces of wood, throwing them in dryers and against the wall -- all utterly in defiance of the Bradford-Key anti-smacking law, which you'll remember was going to put a stop to all this -- and do you know who's to blame for all these incidents: According to all the experts, we all are! You, me, absolutely everyone. Everyone except for the lowlifes and those who take our money to pay for their breeding.

"They're not to blame," I keep hearing; "WE are." It makes me sick.

"Our children belong to all of us."

"We're killing our children."

"We need to look after our under-fives."

"Violence against our children is unnacceptable."

"Family violence is a community issue."

"We all need to step up."

"We all need to become and be nosy neighbours from now on."

"We object to the way people are treating our little babies."

"We must bring back discipline in homes."

"We all need to be questioned when we go to hospital."

"Our children belong to all of us."

""We all need to take responsibility - perhaps we should all become our brothers, sisters and children's keepers... An act of violence against a Maori child is an act of violence against all Maori' says Te Ururoa Flavell.

"How do I feel when I hear they're Maori?" says Pita Sharples. "I feel ashamed. I feel guilty."

What a lot of horseshit. These people aren't talking about some inexplicable act of nature but about a series of incidents with one thing in common: lowlifes beating and killing their own children -- children they've been paid to have.

These aren't our babies.

We aren't killing them.

These babies are produced by lowlifes who don't want them; they're paid by us to have them; we're forced to pay for them by politicians who don't care about the incentives their welfare system has created. There's no need to for Sharples or any other Maori to feel ashamed to be Maori; he should be ashamed as a politician who supports those payments and their incentives and the system that delivers them.

We -- you and I -- we aren't responsible for the carnage and the abuse. I haven't killed or beaten any children, and neither have you. The people responsible for the carnage are the killers and the beaters themselves, and the scum who force us to pay for these lowlifes to have children they don't want.

If "we" really could do anything, it would be putting an end to being forced to pay for no-hopers to breed. That more than anything else would put a stop to it.

If you agree, then don't just tell me: tell everyone who will listen -- and every one of those 121 time servers in parliament.

UPDATE 1: From Liberty Scott:

So the next time my mother enters hospital, she'll be asked:

• Has anybody hurt or threatened you?
• Have you ever felt controlled or always criticised?
• Have you been asked to do anything sexual that you didn't want to do?

Perhaps if it is asked of someone who enters hospital with injuries that could be attributed to violence then yes, but to ask every woman? What utter nonsense....

I have another idea, let's ban all those convicted of serious violent offences from claiming welfare. Who can morally justify that, why should they live funded by others?

UPDATE 2: From Lindsay Mitchell:

Just listening to Labour MP Dover Samuels calling in to Radio Live and vigorously regaling Jackson and Tamihere with his thoughts about these latest atrocities. He says he and a lot of other MPs knew that Sue Bradford's bill would make not one iota of difference. There are no academic solutions. There are no do-gooder solutions. And the Maori Party and their 'aroha' can go jump. There you go.

And again:

What we are seeing at the moment is not new. 'Battered Child (or baby) Syndrome' was first discussed in the 1960s. From Family Matters by Bronwyn Dalley;

New Zealand medical practitioners and paediatric radiologists took a central role in the dissemination of awareness of the syndrome; staff at Wellington Hospital noted the large number of 'injury' cases with a suspicion that was often confirmed when X-rays revealed earlier healed fractures.

Many cases of abuse investigated "displayed an intergenerational pattern." So the abuse stems back further still. The distressing number of young Maori children who died at the hands of their young mothers who had themselves been state wards is commented on.

For a long time associated factors have been known. Unmarried parenting, very young parenting, and a personal parental history of neglect and abuse. Add to these increased misuse of alcohol and drugs and benefits that pay emotionally and financially bereft people to become parents and it is little wonder what problem already existed has worsened.

UPDATE 3: As William Curtis, Michael William Curtis, Michael Curtis's girlfriend, Oriwa Terrina Kemp, Michael Paul Pearson and Wiremu Te Aroha Te Whanau Curtis are charged with assault for putting their three-year-old in a dryer, the government swings into action with "a four-year, $14m campaign ... aimed at changing the way New Zealanders think and act about family violence." The way New Zealanders think. The way "we" think.

Do they really think the no-hopers we pay to breed are going to hear this campaign we're also forced to pay for? Or take the least notice of it?

The government's answer to this end-road of welfarism is not to question the welfare, not to take a good long look at what paying no-hopers to breed has brought, but instead an expensive campaign of education to tell the people who are listening, the people who aren't killing their chidren, that they shouldn't. Says Cindy bloody Kiro in support of this fatuous stupidity, "The best deterrent is prevention through education -- teaching young people basic parenting skills and about a baby's development," she said.

She's deluded. She seems to think the likes of the Curtises and Kahuis are interested in parenting skills and the "development" of the babies that are their meal tickets. Will she never learn?

UPDATE 4: Meanwhile, this from a concerned Rodney Hide: "The Sunday Star Times have this extract from my book My Year of Living Dangeously [sic] in the bookstores this Friday..." As Blair Mulholland says, "It's official. The ACT Party is no more."

UPDATE 5: Heather Roy pipes up. As does Peter Osborne from Libertarianz. Says Heather:

"Now we have more abuse in the papers and the outrage is back. In typical political fashion neighbours are being criticised for not reporting abuse, the community is being exhorted to be more watchful and child abuse has been labelled a 'Maori problem'.

"But we should not be looking at who to blame - rather, we should be asking WHAT to blame. I have attended every meeting of the Cross-Party Group on Family Violence set up after the Kahui twins died. Despite numerous attempts, there was no willingness by any other committee member to even discuss - let alone tackle - welfare dependency.

"Rather, this issue - which has a direct correlation to child abuse - was placed in the 'too hard' basket, because making meaningful change to welfare in New Zealand might cost Labour some support when the election rolls around.

Says Osborne:

"Only New Zealanders as individuals can take control of the social ills facing us all today. Forget about Nanny State, it was she who set this disaster up in the first place and it was we who voted for it. Nothing can be done until we win back control over our own lives. This means getting Nanny State out of our homes, out of our workplaces, out of your children's minds and out of our pockets. The well being of our fellow citizens, neighbours, friends and relatives does not need to be centrally controlled and we certainly shouldn't be compelled to finance what is now proving to be a social disaster."

UPDATE 6: W E L C O M E H A R D N E W S R E A D E R S :
I invite you to check what I say above and see if Russell Brown makes his case. He says here:

What we might do [about violent crime] is try and catch and prosecute ... earlier; encourage reporting..., emphasise its irreducible unacceptability, try and pick it up in a public health context -- even if it means doing something as squishy as asking someone about their feelings.

All the measures, that is, that Cresswell mocked and railed against in [this] post.

Do you really thing it's these solutions that I'm mocking and railing against here? Or has he missed the point entirely?

Treating children like adults, and adults like children

We've been told over and over that children must be treated the same as adults -- that they should have the same protection under law. This, we're told, is the reason behind the Bradford/Dung/Clark/Palmer/John Boy anti-smacking bill, so children and adults are treated equally under law.

How surprised I was last evening then to hear on the radio a bureaucrat submitting to the select committee enquiry on Ron Mark's private members' bill, which would lower the age of prosecution for serious crime to 12.

If you do adult crime, then you do adult time -- that's the argument of Mark's bill.

Some children are already criminals [he says] and are getting away with crimes because they know they can... He says an age reduction would help police and courts deal with criminals and offer more protection to potential victims.

No way, said the bureaucrat (whose name I didn't get): even if they've committed serious crimes, she argued, you've got to treat children like children...

The irony appeared lost on the radio reporter, but no irony was intended by Children's Commissar Cindy Kiro, also submitting, who said treating children who commit adult crimes as adults would be wrong, instead the system should look at recognising criminal tendencies, early intervention and wishful thinking.

A different bill, a different story -- even on the same day! One day one group of people are arguing that children should have the same protection under law as adults, and the same day the same group of people are arguing that children should not have the same responsibility under law as adults.

Now, why do you think that is?

UPDATE: Further to yesterday's updates on the wording of the Smacking Compromise, Stephen Franks offers his own legal and political opinion:

Bradford wins complete s. 59 victory
Bradford and Clark must be howling with glee and derision. They’ve outlawyered (not to mention out-politicked) opponents of their Bill.

The ‘compromise’ words have no legal effect. They merely “affirm that the Police have a discretion not to prosecute“ - meaning that no new discretion is added, only the existing rules and duties apply.

Worse - to escape prosecution the smack must be “so inconsequential that there is no public interest in proceeding with a prosecution“. Those words can’t have had competent legal consideration from any opposing lawyer.

At the technical level “no public interest” is ludicrous. Of course there will be some public interest in almost every incident. 20% of the population have a passionate interest in forcing the rest to change their child rearing beliefs. That 20% has made it illegal to smack...

Read on here.

To hell with John Boy.

Below is an open letter from Susan the Libertarian to John Boy Walton (seen here yesterday outflanking Helen on the left). Unlike dripping wet media morons like Colin James and sadly deluded Pink Tories like Whale Oil, Susan is not praising him for his "wise intervention." "To hell with him!" she says instead. I agree. To hell with the appeasing bastard.

Dear John

I'm so angry at what you have done this morning that I struggle as to where to begin.

Firstly, you and your party together with Clark and Bradford have thumbed your collective noses at the electorate that has consistently demonstrated strong disapproval of this bill. That you would ignore that is incredibly arrogant in the first instance, but then you worsen the situation by seeking an unwanted compromise! We didn't want the bill, per se, in the first place, let alone a pathetically vague amendment!

The fact is that parental smacking is still not illegal. You have allied yourself with the worst sort of bedfellows in Sue Bradford and Cindy Kiro, both of whom are out and out communists with odious longterm agendas. This bill will never stop monsters from brutalising children. It will still continue to criminalise good parents - which was always Bradford's plan.

From a political perspective you have well and truly cooked your own goose. Clark was seriously on the ropes with her tacit approval of Bradford's bill, particularly when her differing comments prior to the last election came to light. You have now played right into her hands and she's the winner. Had you not done so, you could have played this trump beautifully come the next election. Now you just look like the Neville Chamberlain you are. More fool, you.

I am so disgusted. Rather than attack the cause of the problem, you piss around with symptoms. Remember that when the country receives news of the next abused child, because it will happen. Remember it, too, when the Nazis at CYFS start removing children from perfectly good homes - because that will also happen.

Shame on you.

Yours sincerely
Susan Ryder

Smacking compromise

Some questions:

When exactly would prosecuting light smacking be in "the public interest"?

And WTF would an "inconsequential"smack look like?

So just WTF does this new Bradford/Clark/Key/Dunne/Palmer anti-smacking Bill mean:

the [new amended Bill] ... will state that police will have discretion not to prosecute parents or guardians for use of force on a child if that force is "so inconsequential there is no public interest in pursuing a prosecution."

Any ideas? Any at all? Does that tell you clearly in advance, in law, what you can and can't do?

Will it stop the criminalisation of good parents? And will it protect good parents from CYFS?

Answers on a postcard, please.

UPDATE 1: Craig Smith of the Family Integrity organisation has an important point to make on the Bradford/Clark/Key/Dunne/Palmer compromise:

It is not changing the re-write of Section 59 which is another clause in the Bill. So, the clause will not pass into the Crimes Act. It is simply a bit of commentary in the Bill. And as Bradford just said [on air] this is precisely what Police do now anyway.

And of course, parents who use reasonable force to correct their children do not use inconsequential force...they use force that is going to have consequences...the consequence of present and future corrected behaviour. Police will have to consider this a criminal act.

And of course, CYFS is most likely still to be advised by police, even when the force is inconsequential, for the force is technically illegal. Here is where our greatest fear lies.

This is total and complete capitulation by National. They've surrendered
completely...

Here then, unless there is some miraculous event in Parliament today, is what Section 59 will look like [subsection 2 is the kicker]:

Parental Control
(1) Every parent of a child and every person in the place of a parent of the child is justified in using force if the force used is reasonable in the circumstances and is for the purpose of --
(a) preventing or minimising harm to the child or another person; or
(b) preventing the child from engaging or continuing to engage in conduct that amounts to a criminal offence; or
(c) preventing the child from engaging or continuing to engage in offensive or disuptive behaviour; or
(d) performing the normal daily tasks that are incidental to good care and parenting.
(2) Nothing in subsection (1) or in any rule of common law justifies the use of force for the purpose of correction.
(3) Subsection (2) prevails over subsection (1).

Correcting your children, you see in (2), is a criminal offense. And (3) says that if there is a doubt as to whether the force was for correction or for prevention, the correction interpretation must prevail.

Until now, juries convict the accused of a crime when no doubt about it exists, when it is beyond reasonable doubt. Now, if charged with the crime of using force to correct your child, the existence of doubt will legally require the jury to convict you of the crime...

UPDATE 2: The Herald's Audrey Young follows in the present tradition of her paper's journalists getting it exactly backwards in saying,

Everyone's a winner in this compromise... The alternative would have seen Helen Clark force unpopular, unwanted and unclear law on the country.

What abject, unadulterated nonsense. What we have forced upon us instead is an unpopular, unwanted and equally unclear compromise, without even the opportunity for debate. If she really thinks New Zealand parents are winners in that, then there's no hope for her.

UPDATE 3: Susan has it exactly right:

John Key: "Politics has been put to one side and sanity has prevailed".

Wrong on both counts, you moron.

My God, I honestly thought I couldn't think less of the Nats than I did. I was wrong. How could anybody vote for them again?

And as for Bradford, what a liar. I heard her say earlier last month that if there was ANY amendment to her bill, she'd 'pull it' altogether. And for all her talk, a persistent 80+% disapproval rating was NOT 'robust debate.'

They really have shown their true colours, the lot of them. Illuminating as to how they forget who works for whom.

UPDATE 4: Just a reminder of my point made some weeks ago: this is about more than just smacking; as Cindy Kiro has indicated clearly enough, it's about nationalising children.

On that score too, a commenter at David Farrars' Kiwiblog reminds us of this section from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's 1848 Communist Manifesto, from which I quote:

Abolition of the family!

Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists...

The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.

Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.

But, you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.

And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention of society, dire or indirect, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention...

You might like to recall that Karl Marx hurled six children into the world with his much put-upon wife Jenny, but like Rousseau he never gave a thought for them or for their care. He 'socialised' his own children almost from their birth.

UPDATE 5: The Kiwi Herald has news that Clark and John Boy are to bury their few differences and will form a new Government of National Unity.

In a move that has stunned political analysts Helen Clarke announced that National and Labour will continue to work together to "advance the interests of good parents and good children everywhere -and all the other good people too."
A beaming Mr Key told reporters: "It seems so right that we should continue our new found common-cause this way."
Describing the moment when the leaders agreed to form the new Government Mr Key said that "after we had agreed on the smacking bill we went to shake hands and for a wonderful moment our eyes met. It was as though we both knew, at that instant, that our differences didn't matter anymore. In a sudden outpouring of emotion I began to say to Helen that we should unite as one, but she interrupted me and said 'John, I know. For the peoples sake let us now walk side-by-side.'
In the new spirit of co-operation Miss Clark and John Key will chair Cabinet "week and week about" while Michael Cullen and Bill English have already found a "lovely little bachelor pad to share."

Read the full 'news' here at The Kiwi Herald: Clark, Key Form Govt of National Unity.

Weekend ramble, April 14

Another weekend ramble through sites and sounds worthy of a weekend's worth of exploration.

• As Marcus says, some good news from the (UK) Daily Telegraph -- there's one British Tory who's not all pink:

  David Cameron has embraced the environmental agenda with greater ardour than any other political leader, even inviting Al Gore to address the shadow cabinet recently, after publicly lauding his film, An Inconvenient Truth.
  But one outspoken Tory, MEP Roger Helmer, is eager to distinguish himself from the rest.
  Helmer has organised a "counter-consensual climate conference" in
  Brussels next week, which will see former chancellor Lord Lawson head a line-up of sceptics, including the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming.
  "Many climatologists reject the alarmist scenario, and there have been disgraceful efforts by the establishment to silence the dissenters," Helmer
  tells Spy. "I've decided to organise the conference to give a platform to the
  other side of the issue. David Cameron wants us to put an extra focus on the
  environment and I'm delighted to help in that process."
  And Gore's Oscar-winning documentary certainly won't be showing. "The event will be followed by a screening of the recent Channel 4 film, The Great Global Warming Swindle."

• "This year marks the 100th anniversary of science fiction writer Robert Heinlein's birth. His hometown of Kansas City is marking the occasion with special events." reports End of the Universe. "Even though he's been dead for nearly two decades, he continues to cast a long shadow on the science fiction field. Which Heinlein book are you going to read to celebrate the centennial?"
  
  
• And on Lord Bore of Nashville's forthcoming 24-hour smugfest, Rob Lyons says, don't do it! Live Earth: Change the Record.

  If you weren’t feeling patronised enough by Live 8, the freebie gig in 2005 that called on G8 politicians to cancel Third World debt (which they were planning to do anyway), Live Earth might really tip you over the edge.
  

• Tyler Cowen records something to remember about the Chinese economic miracle:
  

  ...of the 3,220 Chinese citizens with a personal wealth of 100 million yuan ($13
  million) or more, 2,932 are children of high-level cadres. Of the key positions
  in the five industrial sectors - finance, foreign trade, land development,
  large-scale engineering and securities - 85% to 90% are held by children of
  high-level cadres.

  As Samizdata comments, "These filial links between the commanding heights of China's supposedly private sector and its government betray the fact that China Inc. is [still] the unholy alliance of a dictatorial regime and the application of corrupted 'free' market ideals." At some stage the tension between the two will out, but with what consequences?
  
  
• For those who find it hard to keep up with how to avoid offending the easily offended and the politically correct (but I repeat myself), here's a how-to guide to either offend or to avoid offending: A Politically Correct Lexicon.
  
  
• Let's sing the praises of the internal combustion engine. In fact, says Dwight Lee,

  All environmentalists should be singing the praises of the internal combustion engine (ICE) instead of damning it for polluting the environment. The environmental advantages of the internal combustion engine have been obvious for a long time.

  Join him in his praise at TechCentralStation's Our Green ICE Age.
  
• Architects Christopher Wren and Frank Lloyd Wright both liked to play jokes on clients, and it turns out they even played similar jokes, this one by Wren on the Windsor councillors. Can anyone tell us on which Wright building he played a similar joke with his client?
  
  
• Better Living Through Lefty Activism. Well that's the title of this short video at any rate ...
  
  
• The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism promises "to give [anti-capitalists] an in-your-face economics education that they won't forget — ever." Buy a copy for an anti-capitalist friend today.
  
  
• Tom Beard has news about developer Terry Serepisos' plans for the tallest building in Wellington. Says Tom

  At least you can't accuse him of developing boring buildings. While the later stages of the Century City development on Tory St and the "explosion in a bling factory" planned for Dixon and Victoria streets may be the visual equivalent of a hyperactive kid force-fed with food colouring and party pills, at least they're not the grey envelope-filling cuboids currently being extruded all over Taranaki St like so many rectilinear turds.

  And he throws down a gauntlet: "In fact, and I hope none of my architect friends take offence at this, I can't really think of any New Zealand architects that I could imagine designing a truly exciting 40-50 storey skyscraper..." Any offence taken?
  
  
• For those like me with a taste for hard-core Objectivism, the news that the archives of Stephen Boydstun's Objectivity magazine is now all online is something to sing and shout about. There is some seriously good stuff in here on science and mathematics, value and metaphysics, Aristotelianism and Newtonian physics, and from everyone from Stephen Hicks to Tibor Machan to Ronald Merrill to Michael Huemer. A great resource -- noe making it worth buying another ink cartridge for your printer.
  
  
• Thomas Jefferson’s birthday was earlier this week. Historian David Mayer remembers Thomas Jefferson. Here are the official White House biography, the website for Jefferson’s home at Monticello, and Genevieve LaGreca’s toast to Jefferson’s achievements. [Hat tip Stephen Hicks]
  
  
• What’s Wrong With Contemporary Philosophy. Answer: Lots.
  
  
• Ayaan Hirsi Ali always gives good interview. Here she is again in good combative style in Guernica magazine.
  

  Guernica: It seems when you talk about Islam, it's not your style to say things in a gentle way...
  Ayaan Hirsi Ali: I'm the gentlest of them all, honestly. (laughing)

  Oh yeah, she does irony very well too. :-)
  
  
• Roger Kerr writes on 'The Lever of Riches,' and how we NZers aren't really getting any of it.

  Productivity, described by American economist Joel Mokyr as the “lever of riches”, is a hot topic these days, and rightly so: it's the single most important contributor to reducing poverty, increasing leisure time and meeting health, education, environmental and cultural needs.
  
  That's why New Zealanders should react with alarm to the news last week that the rate of growth in labour productivity (that's the amount of goods and services produced from each hour of a worker's time) was the lowest on record.

  Read on here to find out what's been going wrong.
  
  
• We may not be as productive as we should be, but boy do we have plenty of commissioners to nanny us. Zen Tiger has some slightly tongue in cheek news of new plans to protect our commissioners in Leaving No Commissioner Behind. After all, when you have Children's Commissioner and would-be uber-Nanny Cindy Kiro as a model, then almost everything is possible.
  
  
• Speaking of children and of nanny, Tessa Mayes reports here on how the British government is recruiting children to spy on and ‘re-educate’ the adult population. Kiro et al will no doubt be taking notes. What's Worse Than Big Brother? Little Brother.
  
  
• The ever prolific Tibor Machan explains how to become more prolific yourself: Don't procrastinate. Tibor has tips too on how to overcome your own procrastination, in Remedying Procrastination. Watching Tibor duck out of a conversation a few years ago to use a friend's computer to produce an article on an idea produced in that conversation made me realise just how simple it is to become prolific: it can be as simple as ignoring the calls to Manana. If it worked for Tibor, it can work for you too.
  
  
• Here's an oldie on old Ken Ring's moon madness, a three-parter by Bill Keir from the Auckland Astronomical Society. Good reading.
  
  
• As should have been obvious, Iran's capture and subsequent release of British seamen and marines was a trial balloon that told them much about British and American resolve in the face of piracy. There isn't any. Says Charles Krauthammer,

  Iran has pulled off a tidy little success with its seizure and subsequent release of those 15 British sailors and marines: a pointed humiliation of Britain, with a bonus demonstration of Iran's intention to push back against coalition challenges to its assets in Iraq. All with total impunity. Further, it exposed the utter futility of all those transnational institutions -- most prominently the European Union and the U.N. -- that pretend to maintain international order. You would think maintaining international order means, at a minimum, challenging acts of piracy. No challenge here. Instead, a quiet capitulation.

  See Krauthammer's Britain's Humiliation - and Europe's.
  
  
• Spiked editor Brendan O'Neill has a similar comment: "What is Britain’s role in the world today? Judging from the Iranian captives saga, it is to play the victim." See A Lean, Mean Victim-Making Machine.
  
  
• Based on her reading of Charles Freeman's The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason, Diana Hsieh reflects on how christianity demands one substitute blind obedience for clear-headed moral responsibility.

  Toward the end of the chapter on "The Ascetic Odyssey," Freeman observes that "one can never know whether one is truly saved" in Christianity because "there is no way to judge objectively just how guilty one is in the eyes of God." Consequently, "the only true way to secure a rest from tension on earth is to escape completely from the exercise of moral responsibility; here the 'virtue' of obedience becomes crucial."

  Just another reason to abjure religionists from the field of morality, I'd suggest.
  
  
• On that issue, and relevant to the recent discussions here on christianity and the Dark Ages, Andrew Bernstein has a brilliant full-length review of Rodney Stark's book The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success. Says Bernstein,

  This book, and others like it—along with their admiring treatment by the mainstream liberal press—are signs of the resurgence of Christianity in America. This is all the more frightening because the arguments are being delivered and embraced at an intellectual, not merely a grassroots, level. If such arguments were sound, their growing acceptance among contemporary intellectuals would present no problem; but, as will be shown, this pro-religion thesis, although convincing to some, is egregiously and provably mistaken.

  Bernstein then proceeds to masterfully prove the mistakes in Stark's thesis. As always with articles at The Objective Standard, the full article is available only to subscribers (but as I've said before subscription really is worth every penny) -- you can get the flavour of Bernstein's full review in the opening paragraphs, and also in his reply to two letters on his article in a subsequent issue. See The Tragedy of Theology: How Religion Caused and Extended the Dark Ages, and Letters to the Editor, Spring Edition.

  Why, you ask, did medieval Europeans embrace Aristotle and the Greeks? More broadly, why is Western culture, despite all its flaws, more committed to reason than is any other culture?

  Read on to discover his answer.
  
  
• "America is the Nation of the Enlightenment." Philosopher David Kelly explains what that statement means, and points out who the philosophical enemies are.
  
  
• "Why so gloomy about global warming?" asks scientist Richard Lindzen. "A warmer climate could prove to be more beneficial than the one we have now." See Lindzen in Newsweek: 'Why So Gloomy? Learning to Live With Global Warming.'
  
  
• Far from being a libertarian hero as Tim Wikiriwhi has claimed, Frank Bainimarama is driving a truck through Fiji's constitution. Idiot/Savant considers its prospects for restitution in Fiji: Demolishing the Constitution.
  
  
• And finally, what does Nairobi's plastic bag problem tell us about property rights, and the lack thereof? Says Greg Rehmke, an awful lot. "Sometime symptoms are confused with the disease that causes them. Litter is one such symptom often confused with an economic disease." See Nairobi's Plastic Bags Are Barking.
  

It's about more than just smacking

I've been sent a very good letter which was sent to the Herald yesterday, which they unfortunately declined to publish:

Could somebody please tell me what banning smacking has to do with environmentalism?

Green Party MP Sue Bradford is about as 'green' as a red pepper. The reality is that the Green Party has been systematically hijacked in order to promote Marxist ideology in a softer, more marketable light.

SR

Amidst a measured piece on the anti smacking Bill (voted through to its first reading last night by 70 to 51), Liberty Scott reminds us that Sue Bradford and her fellow travellers do have a wider agenda here,

and you see it in Childrens’ Commissioner Cindy Kiro – it is the state having a greater and greater role as parent – in funding children, regulating children, regulating and funding their health and education, media, housing.

As I said yesterday, she is intent on removing parents' hands from their own children; and equally intent on the state getting their hands on them. Let me remind you of Kiro's enthusiastic plans for "our chooldren," which is lessening the influence of parents as parents, and increasing the role of the state as parent -- yes, that's literally the Nanny State. Scott describes as "Orwellian" her

proposal that the state monitor every child from birth religiously to make sure that parents are being good. She has given it a long vapid name (Te Ara Tukutuku Nga Whanaungatanga o Nga Tamariki: Weaving Pathways to Wellbeing) to make it sound so nice and inclusive, instead of "State monitoring of parents and children" which is what it bloody well is. What is even more disturbing is that Sue Bradford is reverting to her communist past in supporting it. Greens liberal? Hardly.

*

Cindy Kiro brought this up before and now she is excited about what is an absolutely terrifying proposal:

"Individual plans, owned by the child and held by the family, will be developed in partnership with children and families and each child would have a named primary professional responsible...

Bob McCoskrie National Director of Family First makes the quite correct point:

Who gets to decide what is best for children? This report is clear; it’s Dr Kiro and the morass of bureaucracy that is going to surround this initiative. It is a licence for ‘professionals’ to interfere in families’ lives when there is no crime and no abuse,” “This would fundamentally alter the relationship between the family and the state

It's a simple message leave good parents alone and stop subsidising bad ones.

And on that last point, Scott has very good policy advice for those honestly opposed to assaults on children: remove future victims and welfare privileges for all those so convicted.

[R]emove those who brutalise and destroy childrens’ lives from being able to receive money [and other benefits] from the state, and from having access to children in the future... Once you have brutally violated another person, you have no right to expect any of the privileges of state, except to be left alone with those who choose to be with you – children don’t count in that.

More details on that line of argument here.

LINKS: Smacking ban - Liberty Scott
Big Sister Cindy 'Stalin' Kiro supported by Stalinist Sue - Liberty Scott (Oct, 2006)

RELATED POSTS ON: NZ Politics, Greens, Law, Smacking