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January 21, 2012 11:00am by David Farrar

The year of the Greens

In my Herald column yesterday I asked if 2012 will be the year of the Greens?

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NZ Politics
David Farrar on Politics
Greens
NZ Herald

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Comments (56)

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reid

It’s their policies which are fundamentally flawed and since they are ideologically driven like no other party apart from perhaps Mana, they will never overcome that intellectual drag amongst their own activist membership.

http://www.thelocal.se/10836/
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January 21, 2012 11:46am
Richard Hurst

Hopefully this will be the year the Greens are challenged about their policies. For instance in the last election they threw around the figure of a ‘100,000 jobs’ created by ‘green tech industries’ What jobs? How? What time frame? Based on whose figures? What models were used? Real world examples? What sort of jobs? Etc . The only Green tech news we’ve seen this year is that its not economically sustainable to build wind farms anywhere in the South Island. Strangely no public comment from the Greens yet their quite willing to make statements against recent plans to expand offshore oil drilling. Hmmmm…
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January 21, 2012 12:15pm
thor42

It *could* be their year. That is, if their policies were to remain unchallenged.
FWIW, I’m doing all that I can to get the message out that so-called “manmade global warming” is complete nonsense.
This video – “The great global warming swindle” – shows that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtevF4B4RtQ
NZ needs to pull out of the stupid, pointless Kyoto agreement immediately.
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January 21, 2012 12:17pm
Paulus

Ideoligy has little to do with the Green(peace) Party.
The media love them as they cannot get a handle on the Labour Party (neither can they).
Therefore it will be seen that in publicity terms the Green(peace) Party are the Leaders of the Opposition.
It is there intention to take New Zealand into a green and pleasant south pacific island, where we commence everything with Kumbaya.
First they have to tax the Farming Industry in order to make it uneconomic for any farm. Imagine a CGT on farms, bring back death duties and you have stuffed over 25% of New Zealand’s GDP.
It is only idealism which matters to the Green(peace) Party. If unemployment gets in the way so what to them ! – it is not part of their goal so they do not really care. It is the ideal that matters.
Look at their members in Parliament – highly middle class educated in Green(peace) affairs. Plenty of effective PHD’s in environmental studies.
As I am nearing the end of my time I fear for my Grandchildren.
Do we really know what we do with this idealogical rabble in ascendancy?
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January 21, 2012 1:06pm
reid

Ideoligy has little to do with the Green(peace) Party.

Perhaps we differ in our definition of ideology. I personally always use it in the context of being idealistic, as opposed to being practical. That’s what I meant above.
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January 21, 2012 1:46pm
Johnboy

Load of bollocks. When Liarbour fails the sad and disaffected vote Green.

If Shearer clicks the Greenies will drop to 6 seats next election.

Us filthy rich Tories just keep on voting National/ACT right or wrong! 🙂
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January 21, 2012 2:12pm
wat dabney

But what will happen to the Greens once they run out of lies and manuactured scare stories like Peak Oil and Global Warming? People will wake up and realise it was always about the fascism.
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January 21, 2012 2:25pm
samtheman

I agree the Green’s rise can mostly be put down to how crap Labour have been over the last 3 years, although the financial crisis and the growing anti-‘greed’ sentiment probably played a part too. I’d have to say Russel Norman is probably my preferred PM at the moment, although I wish the Greens would drop the hippy/spiritual bullshit (homeopathy, organics etc). They should focus on being the party they marketed themselves as this election: socially liberal, left-wing on economic issues but not anti-growth, and a staunch defender of NZers’ right to a clean environment.
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January 21, 2012 2:28pm
Johnboy

“I’d have to say Russel Norman is probably my preferred PM at the moment”

I’d seek immediate therapy if I were you old chap! 🙂
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January 21, 2012 2:35pm
samtheman

Ha fair call, in my defense the political talent in New Zealand must be at an all-time low right now, hope Shearer picks up his game.

Also, in response to the few climate-change deniers out there, who do think think is orchestrating this ‘hoax’? Completely ignore the scientific evidence for a second (as you seem to have no problem doing) and just consider who stands to benefit either way. If global warming is found to be man made, the losers are oil companies, oil producing nations, auto manufacturers and heavy industry, while the winners are alternative energy companies, forestry owners and Al Gore. Seriously, who do you think would win in a hoax-off? The side that stands to benefit simply does not have the resources to orchestrate a hoax against some of the largest and most powerful companies in the world!
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January 21, 2012 3:06pm
Other_Andy

Sam

There are no few climate-change deniers here.
The climate has been changing for the last few millions of years.
Hot, cold, wet, dry……

Why don’t you take your sermon to the ‘General Thread’.
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January 21, 2012 3:16pm
Johnboy

Love your logic samtheman but for the one major flaw.

It doesn’t really matter which side of the global warming hoax reigns supreme, big oil or the tree huggers, the only losers will be you and I, the consumers, who will just get to pay more one way or the other.

Don’t leave seeking help too late my friend! 🙂
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January 21, 2012 3:16pm
wat dabney

samtheman,

Who stands to gain from the “hoax”? Well, as just one (but relevant) example, the Green Party certainly has done very well out of it.

Peak Oil, Global Warming, the War on Drugs.

As the saying goes, war is the health of the state.
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January 21, 2012 3:18pm
Johnboy

Other_Andy!

Why don’t you piss off!

I have just landed a container load of non-allergenic, sustainably-mined, ecologically-safe, organic, tinfoil coated umbrellas that are proof against all known asteroids currently mapped in the Ort Belt.

I had Sam lined up as master agent for my franchise and you come along and shit on me!

May all your ugly wives grow uncontrollable underarm hair!!!!
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January 21, 2012 3:24pm
samtheman

wat dabney – For sure, Green parties around the world have boosted their political influence thanks to the threat of global warming. However, I’d bet the marketing and propaganda budgets of all the Green parties of the world wouldn’t compare to that of a single oil company. The money just doesn’t stack up in favour of a tree-huggers’ conspiracy.

johnboy – Of course consumers will have to pay more for things! It’s a classic externality – we only get goods at the price we do because it doesn’t reflect the added costs we impose on others by producing/consuming them: pollution, smog (and maybe even global warming). Quite simply the markets for oil, energy, dairy etc are being distorted by this implicit subsidy from the New Zealand people.
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January 21, 2012 4:11pm
Johnboy

Tell that to the poor of south Auckland as you double the pump price when they are gassing up the 1999 Estima Sam old chap.

I’ve heard the ED at Middlemore is no worse than any other in the country when your waiting to have your broken jaw fixed.
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January 21, 2012 4:18pm
Other_Andy

Sam

“I’d bet the marketing and propaganda budgets of all the Green parties of the world wouldn’t compare to that of a single oil company. The money just doesn’t stack up in favour of a tree-huggers’ conspiracy.”

Sorry Sam. Global warming alarmists are funded to the tune of more than $50 billion (in taxpayer money) versus $19 million for skeptics.
But don’t let the facts get in the way of the narrative.
Greepeace alone is a $157 million (1990 revenues) company.
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January 21, 2012 4:20pm
wat dabney

samtheman,

It’s not green/fascist parties who have paid for this, it is taxpayers’ money running into the billions, which absolutely dwarfs anything the oil companies might spend (orders of magnitude.)

And there is nothing so corrupt as state-sponsored “science.”

Just look at what Climategate revealed. “Hide the decline”, conspiracy to pervert the peer review process, deletion of emails to thwart Freedom of Information requests, etc.

Yet it all goes unpunished, because it is telling a story which the statists (i.e. most political parties) wish to exploit.

Do you remember the famous Hockeystick chart, which was created by state-sponsored “scientists” and purported to show entirely unnatural warming over the last 100 years?

It was exposed as a fraud by independant experts who had to fight tooth and nail to obtain the data.

It was a fraud from beginning to end.

Yet show me a politician who took an objective interest in the subject. It’s like the War on Drugs. They don’t give a fuck because they are corrupt power-seekers.
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January 21, 2012 4:36pm
wat dabney

samtheman,

Billions of taxpayers’ dollars squandered due to Green scaremongering:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57358484/tax-dollars-backing-some-risky-energy-projects/

And that’s just a tiny part of all the interests who stand to gain by exploiting the warming scam. And the Green Party is essentially no different from these companies scamming for cash. It has absolutely no interest in objective science. Show me that ginger snake-oil salesman who leads it and I’ll show you a fascist liar seeking to gain power over the rest of us.
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January 21, 2012 4:55pm
wat dabney

The Green Party’s other big lie: Peak Oil

“North America will become almost totally self-sufficient in energy in two decades, thanks to a big growth in the production of biofuels, shale gas and unconventional oil, according to projections by BP.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1871d6ba-4201-11e1-a1bf-00144feab49a.html

Google for “US on path to energy self-sufficiency” if you want to read the article.

Super-fracking:

“The ability to tap into vast new oil and gas resources in shale formations is driving a wave of innovation to hone the technique and provide companies with a competitive advantage. ”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-11/super-fracking-goes-deeper-to-pump-up-natural-gas-production.html
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January 21, 2012 5:42pm
Wetfootmammal

Oh here we go – the denialist brigade are out in force at k-blog again. It really is too late for humanity though. Our species is doomed. Unless we all miraculously ditch petty ego for a higher form of consciousness – but that will not happen.
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January 21, 2012 5:46pm
samtheman

johnboy – Nice to hear you are now a champion for the poor.

Andy – If that is the case (a source would be nice) I’d suggest that the $50 billion going to “global warming alarmists” is actually going to “scientists” who believe in global warming and are trying to find solutions to a problem almost every government in the developed world has identified as being significant.

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_science. From a scientific perspective the global warming debate has been and gone, and attention is now being focused on how to fix it. Since we are talking about facts, the fact is that the scientific consensus, given the data available, is that global warming is happening and is in large part caused by human activity.

wat dabney – I didn’t suggest the solution to global warming was to throw taxpayers’ money at projects doomed to fail. The interests you speak of appear to mainly consist of start-up alternative energy companies who, and I’ll say it again, do not even remotely have the resources to buy out over 90% (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change) of climate scientists.

Only slightly more plausible is the idea that politicians have invented global warming to create fear and stay elected, until you realise that part of their solution is increasing taxes, which doesn’t seem like the move of someone desperate to stay in office.

Finally, your arguments are seriously undermined by your insistence (twice in 2 posts!) that the Greens are fascists. I’m no fan of Don Brash or John Key, but I’m not going to start calling them names. I just think their economic views are at odds with how the world works.
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January 21, 2012 5:55pm
Johnboy

Always have been a champion for poor sheepherders Sam.

Of course when I win powerball I may decide to turn traitor and join the other side.

C’est la guerre! 🙂
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January 21, 2012 6:00pm
Manolo

Let’s hope 2312 is the year of the Luddites. Not a moment earlier.
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January 21, 2012 6:20pm
gump

Some of the things the Greens want to achieve are quite sensible e.g. better protections for rural waterways.

Unfortunately some of their other policies are batshit crazy.

If they manage to downplay the stupid stuff, they might have a chance of getting some of their more sensible policies enacted.
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January 21, 2012 6:39pm
Wetfootmammal

samtheman

“I’m no fan of Don Brash or John Key, but I’m not going to start calling them names. I just think their economic views are at odds with how the world works.”

I disagree. The global financial elite, through such functionaries, are consciously driving the world toward environmental and economic collapse.

The Christian, Zionist and Islamic fundamentalists, who now control far too much of the world, are hell-bent on their self-fulfilling prophecies. Their prophecies require a global death spiral, to get their “final battle” and following that, an autocratic global government. It’s not that far off now.
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January 21, 2012 6:43pm
wat dabney

samtheman,

“From a scientific perspective the global warming debate has been and gone, and attention is now being focused on how to fix it.”

I must have missed that “debate.” Which is strange because it’s a subject I’ve taken a lot of interest in for many years.
In fact, it’s more accurate to say that global warming has been and gone, since there hasn’t been any for a decade or more and solid science indicates several decades of cooling are in front of us.

“Only slightly more plausible is the idea that politicians have invented global warming to create fear and stay elected”

No one is talking a global conspiracy. We are talking about the normal sordid self-interest and opportunism that has driven politics for hundreds of years.

“Finally, your arguments are seriously undermined by your insistence (twice in 2 posts!) that the Greens are fascists.”

Fascism is a term with definate meaning, in the same way that Socialist and Communist have technical meanings. The Green Party espouses Fascism. But in this they are not so different from Labour or National.

Wetfootmammal,

You sound like a Green supporter. And, to be honest, a bit of a twat.
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January 21, 2012 7:05pm
reid

Their prophecies require a global death spiral, to get their “final battle” and following that, an autocratic global government. It’s not that far off now.

It’s actually the biblical prophecies that are being fulfilled and its their plans which are in accordance with those, not the other way round.

One of the aspects of their plans however is they want a global population of 500m people which means 94.5% of us have to die, but the reason they want that is so that the rest of them can live in harmony with nature, so while there may be some short term destruction, they’re not hell bent on destroying the environment, quite the opposite in fact. The fact many people mostly lefties think that, is because of the profound confusion which exists in such people, Wetfoot. Let’s hope you’re not one of them.
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January 21, 2012 7:06pm
Other_Andy

Sam

You are qouting Wikipedia as a source? The same Wikipedia where William Connolley, a Green Party activist who served as a Wikipedia administrator since 2003, used his power as administrator to promote alarmism as settled science, block the views of opposing scientists, and rewrite biographies of skeptical scientists to belittle their accomplishments or dismiss them as frauds.

As for scientists, do you mean that group of climate scientists such as NASA alarmist James Hansen and disgraced Climategate fraudsters Michael Mann and Phil who made it clear they had a predetermined goal to prove man-made global warming will have dire consequences?
The ones that were hiding evidence and destroying e-mails?
There are lots of respectable real scientists that oppose the view that global warming is man made.
Google for a list, it is a long and distinguist one.
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever is one of them. So is Antonino Zichichi, emeritus professor of nuclear physics at the University of Bologna and president of the World Federation of Scientists and Chris de Freitas, Associate Professor, School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science, University of Auckland and John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (contributor to several IPCC reports) etc etc. etc.

As for self-serving government officials.
You mean one such as this one?
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Christine Stewart, Former Canadian Minister of the Environment

From a scientific perspective the global warming debate has turned a corner.
For awhile, aided by a compliant media, global warming advocates were successful in swinging public opinion to their cause. No more.

As for references, do your own homework next time.
Here is some on the funding of the warmist.
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/8/6/100434.shtml
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January 21, 2012 7:09pm
Manolo

Sam, for any future quote go no further than the deranged Nick Smith, Labour lite minister, incompetent supreme and enemy of the New Zealand economy.

Smith, a “distinguished” scientist will provide you with all the disinformation you need to know. He’s the ETS “genius”.
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January 21, 2012 7:19pm
Scott Chris

wat dabney says:- “But what will happen to the Greens once they run out of lies and manuactured scare stories like Peak Oil and Global Warming?”

Well wat, when GHG emissions are back under control, then we can focus on harnessing their properties to ward off the next ice age.

And there is always the fall back position of natural habitat loss, which of course is intrinsically linked to the warming threat.

But don’t worry wat. Those of us with a genuine concern for the environment don’t have to manufacture any crises. We have an abundance of them.
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January 21, 2012 7:38pm
Wetfootmammal

Reid – are you saying that you’re free of existential confusion? I believe in the existence in a higher order of things, but i’m not sure of the exact nature of that order. Are you?
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January 21, 2012 8:15pm
Steve

Will 2012 be the year of the Greens?
No, 2012 is the year of the Dragon but the Greens have their fair share of Dragons
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January 21, 2012 8:19pm
reid

Reid – are you saying that you’re free of existential confusion?

Absolutely not Wetfoot.

I believe in the existence in a higher order of things, but i’m not sure of the exact nature of that order. Are you?

Reasonably. In that my understanding matches what’s happening in this world today and has done for some years now. But that doesn’t mean to say things won’t happen that cause me surprise or which cause me to revise my framework, but my current understanding gives me predictions which pan out. Why?
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January 21, 2012 8:35pm
DJP6-25

Once again, the Herald have to put a ‘health warning’ at the bottom of the article by DPF. I wonder when they’ll do one for their socialist ‘journalists’? It might read something like this: A. Whiny Git is a member of the [insert name of Socialist organisation here] , and often comments on political issues.

cheers

David Prosser
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January 21, 2012 8:40pm
Wetfootmammal

Reid:

“In that my understanding matches what’s happening in this world today and has done for some years now.”

Well, i can claim the same, but how do you discern whether unfolding events are the result of a “god’s” plan, or the machinations of biblical fundamentalists? Muslim, Zionist and Christian fundamentalists all think that they are destined to rule the world. Naturally this is going to lead to endless war in the middle east. The secular explanation makes just as much sense as the Biblical one, so how to chose? Why assume that the Bible has it right?
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January 21, 2012 9:02pm
reid

Wetfoot I’ll reply on GD.
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January 21, 2012 9:14pm
samtheman

wat – Thanks for clarifying, it sounded like you were using the term fascist as purely derogatory. Just looking up some of the central ideas of fascism and they don’t remind me of the Greens: social Darwinism, dictatorship, racism, violence and war. How do the Greens, Labour or National fit into that ideology?

Andy – I’m using Wikipedia as a source, you’re using a conservative news website. I have no doubt there are scientists who disagree with the accepted theory but there are many many more who agree. Scientists, like everyone else, are in danger of becoming too attached to their beliefs, which explains the behaviour of a small number of them in the Climategate scandal. I try to challenge my beliefs often, hence this debate.

I have an issue with conspiracy theories that don’t provide reasonable explanation for peoples’ actions. Why are the majority of climate scientists lying? Why are the majority of governments imposing costs on their producers because of this lie, which they are also apparently paying to keep going to the tune of $50b? Why haven’t some of the wealthiest corporations, who this lie directly detriments, managed to fund credible studies exposing this lie? And finally, why is it that those who deny climate change are almost all staunch free-marketeers? A lack of reasonable answers to those questions is why I’m not inclined to believe the conspiracy.
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January 21, 2012 9:33pm
Wetfootmammal

Ok – fair enough.
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January 21, 2012 9:41pm
Yoza

other-Andy 7;09pm: “You are qouting Wikipedia as a source?” As if this detracts from the credibility of the points being made, then as a source for your ridiculous assertion the that $50 billion is directed to climate science versus $19 million to denier crackpots you use an organisation called “NEWSMAX.com”.

How about this “There was a $3 billion donation to the global warming cause from Virgin Air’s Richard Branson alone.”

Where does NEWSMAX find a source for this patently ludicrous claim; a blog post on the EPW site. That’s the trouble with denier crackpots their ‘evidence’ amounts to …”this blogger said…”.
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January 22, 2012 7:40am
wat dabney

samtheman,

“Just looking up some of the central ideas of fascism and they don’t remind me of the Greens: social Darwinism, dictatorship, racism, violence and war. How do the Greens, Labour or National fit into that ideology?”

None of those things are inherently fascistic: Communists, Socialists and Capitalists could equally advocate nearly all those positions. Unions have a long and ignoble history of racism, for example.

These are all economic systems.

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Fascism.html

The Greens are not advocating state control of the means of production (Socialism), or the abolishment of private property (Communism); and they certainly aren’t advocating property rights and laissez-faire free markets (Capitalism.)

What they advocate is the notional retention of private property but with inherent property rights drastically stripped away so that the state can impose some supposed higher national purpose, all coupled with huge direct state interventions in favoured sectors and industries. In other words, Fascism.

There is nothing new or surprising in this. In the States, FDR is widely recognised for following the lead of European fascists with his New Deal (which caused such economic havoc and only lengthened and deepened the severity of the Depression.)

“Three new deals: reflections on Roosevelt’s America, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany, 1933-1939”
http://www.amazon.com/Three-New-Deals-Reflections-Roosevelts/dp/080507452X
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January 22, 2012 11:13am
Owen McShane

Re the origin of the Green movement in the late 19th Century in Germany, and the way those Green philosophies fed into National Socialism go here:
http://www.rmastudies.org.nz/library/65-the-age-of-environmentalism/307-enviromentalism

In particular read “Beware the Dark Greens.
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January 22, 2012 11:54am
wat dabney

The MSM routinely uses the term “right wing” to describe racist groups. This tells us more about the MSM than it does about the groups in question. When you actually look at them they are invariably collectivist (i.e. left wing.) In the US, for example, it is the Democratic Party which is most closely associated with Jim Crow racist laws.
The MSM also routinely describes Fascism as a right-wing system when, by definition, it is as left-wing as Socialism and Communism. It just has a different economic model. Hence many people are confused.

This confusion is no accident on the part of the lefties in the MSM, which wrongly use the terms “right wing” and “fascist” interchangeably, and then merely as pejoratives.
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January 22, 2012 12:24pm
Pete George

What does the rampant use of perjoratives tell us about people on blogs then?
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January 22, 2012 1:13pm
samtheman

wat – Ok fair enough, although I do think that when most people use the word fascist they are referencing the totalitarianism usually displayed by such regimes. It’s interesting to find that all governments in the western world operate a fascist economic system!

However I’m going to have to call you out on your claim about racism, which I believe pretty much crosses all economic schools of thought. No doubt that many (if not most) of the members of both the Mana party and the ACT party are racists. I’d agree that most extremist racist groups are hard-left, but I hope you’re not trying to use that to imply that left-wing parties are inherently racist.

As for US politics, the Jim Crow laws began in the 1800s, when everyone was racist. I hope you’re not suggesting that the Democrats are the racist party in the US, because that’s completely false, especially in our life times. Newt Gingrich, who is close to leading the race to be the Republican candidate for the presidency, once described English as “the language of freedom” while calling Spanish “the language of living in the ghetto”. Republican candidates routinely play the race card and more or less have to if they want to win some of the Southern states. In the mean time, Democrats elected the country’s first president from an ethic minority.

Owen – had a quick read of your essay. I would say there are fundamentalists and extremists on every sides and I don’t agree with any of them.

PS: How do you get italics on this site?
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January 22, 2012 1:17pm
Pete George

samtheman: <i>italics</i>
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January 22, 2012 1:43pm
Owen McShane

Fascism used to be fairly well understood as a distinct ideology but became a general terms of abuse during the sixties – the times when Reagan was described as the Fascist gun in the West etc.

It has only been since the writings of Berlin that many of us have looked back to its origins in the Romantic Movement and especially as expressed in Germany. While it is easy to link US rascism with Fascist racism the difference is distinct. Fascist racism is much more general is concerned about genetic purity and mongrelisation as contrary to natural law. We see this expressed in green antipathy to genetic modification and in Planning documents requiring eco sourced plants etc.

BUt it is never black and white. Roussseau’s Romanticism had a strong element of Libertarianism and direct democracy well bedded in – which is well expressed in the TV series “The Darling Buds of May”.

My general observation is that Socialism is the DArk side of the Enlightenment – engineering becomes social engineering. Fascism is the Dark Side of Romanticism. Communism combines the two dark sides by adding the charismatic leader of Fascism to the Social engineering of Socialism.
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January 22, 2012 2:50pm
wat dabney

samtheman,

“I’m going to have to call you out on your claim about racism, which I believe pretty much crosses all economic schools of thought. No doubt that many (if not most) of the members of both the Mana party and the ACT party are racists. I’d agree that most extremist racist groups are hard-left, but I hope you’re not trying to use that to imply that left-wing parties are inherently racist.”

The essential difference between a left-wing racist and a right-wing racist is that with the right-winger it remains a wholly private matter, since he is at the same time advocating a minimal state which lacks the scope and power to create Jim Crow laws etc. (Everyone has the right to indulge their own prejudices in their private life.)
By contrast the lefty explicitly seeks to use the power of the state to coercively impose his beliefs and values on everyone else, racism included. Genocide and ethnic cleansing are the ultimate and quintessential left-wing actions, constituting as they do the complete overriding of individual liberty for the purported good of society.

“As for US politics, the Jim Crow laws began in the 1800s, when everyone was racist.”

Clearly that’s not true, otherwise there’d have been no need for such laws. The framers obviously concluded that people weren’t racist enough.

It was Capitalism that defeated Jim Crow, because Capitalism imposes a financial cost on those who irrationally discriminate.

“The incentives of the political process are different from the incentives of the economic process…Private owners of streetcar, bus, and railroad companies in the South lobbied against the Jim Crow laws while these laws were being written, challenged them in the courts after the laws were passed, and then dragged their feet in enforcing those laws after they were upheld by the courts.”

http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/culture/racism/4457-rosa-parks-pursuit-of-profit-vs-racism.html
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January 22, 2012 2:59pm
cha

Cites WND contributor Thomas Sowell, thanks for the giggle.
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January 22, 2012 3:21pm
Yoza

“It was Capitalism that defeated Jim Crow, because Capitalism imposes a financial cost on those who irrationally discriminate.”

Weird, even by the standards of this site. Racial segregation in the US was defeated by decades of activism and organising by progressive movements, movements that could only be described as left-wing.
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January 22, 2012 3:24pm
samtheman

wat – You persistently assume that support for a small part of an ideology necessarily implies support for the most extreme interpretation of that ideology. Because a left-winger that thinks that the state should have a role in society, they automatically want to legislate racism and instigate genocide. Surely you can see how talk such as this destroys sensible discussion about political issues? You see it in the US all the time – anyone who doesn’t support complete deregulation is labeled a socialist/communist.

I take it that you are a classic liberal, who believes the government should generally stay out of people’s lives. As a social liberal, I have a degree of respect for this, but unfortunately this is not opinion of the majority of right-wingers out there. If you want to see people using “the power of the state to coercively impose [their] beliefs and values on everyone else“, look no further than the Republicans in the US looking to ban abortion, contraception and remove gay rights because of their religious beliefs. The Greens generally believe the government should stay out of people’s social lives, but some government intervention is required in the economy.

It might surprise you to know that I absolutely believe in the power of capitalism to improve people’s lives. I’m a left winger not because I yearn for perfect equality and ethnic cleansing, but because I’m wary of the ability of those who can afford it to distort markets for their own benefit.

As Owen says it’s never black and white so let’s rightly ignore the extremists on all sides and have a real discussion.
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January 22, 2012 3:39pm
wat dabney

“You persistently assume that support for a small part of an ideology necessarily implies support for the most extreme interpretation of that ideology. Because a left-winger that thinks that the state should have a role in society, they automatically want to legislate racism and instigate genocide”

I didn’t assume or say anything of the sort.

“…look no further than the Republicans in the US looking to ban abortion, contraception and remove gay rights because of their religious beliefs”

Then clearly such Republicans are not right-wingers. This is not a no-true-scotsman reply either, it is a question of actual definition. Just as National are not right-wing in NZ or the Conservatives in the UK. Neither of these is essentially any different from their Democrat/Labour opponents (and note that when Blair succeeded in removing clause 4 from the party constitution – which committed the party to seek ownership of the means of production – it technically went from being a Socialist party to a Fascist one.)
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January 22, 2012 4:45pm
samtheman

Wat – I’d suggest this is a problem with the left-right scale being insufficient to define political thought. What are your thoughts on the political compass? It includes a libertarian/authoritarian scale for social issues and the traditional left/right for economic issues. Republicans tend to sit well to the right economically with their belief in laissez-faire capitalism, while being authoritarian on social issues. The Greens are the opposite, left-wing economically and liberal on social issues.

http://www.politicalcompass.org/index

Take the test if you haven’t already
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January 22, 2012 5:15pm
Richard29

@ SamtheMan

Welcome to Kiwiblog 🙂

Political Compass rocks – there is also an App on Facebook where you can see the locations of all your friends who’ve completed the quiz. I guess unsurprisingly a lot of my close friends are in the same quadrant as me – although quite a few are also liberal on the vertical axis but from the ‘other side’ on the economic axis. 🙂
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January 23, 2012 11:00am
samtheman

Cheers Richard.

It’s a great site aye, but I’m a bit apprehensive about the Facebook App. It reminds me of what one of my friends has as his ‘Political Views’ on his Facebook profile:

“I don’t share my political views anymore. I prefer to have friends”
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January 23, 2012 11:45am
adze

The Greens ought to be aware of the law of unintended consequences: 🙂

http://xkcd.com/1007/
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January 23, 2012 7:50pm

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