Unmasked by Boat People
It was inevitable. Sooner or later a boat filled with desperate people would set out from India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, whatever, for New Zealand. We have been "protected" to date only by an accident of geography--New Zealand's relative distance. Australia has faced the problem for decades.
A group of Sri Lankan poor (allegedly Tamils previously caught up in the former civil war) have boarded a boat large enough to make it all the way here. They have been declaring their intent to sail to New Zealand to seek asylum. The Prime Minister has made dark hints that he has received intelligence briefings that leave him in no doubt that New Zealand was the intended destination. Others have accused him of overreacting. We believe Mr Key in this instance.
The Commentariat is having conniptions.
The most consistent amongst us are represented by Green MP, Keith Locke and Amnesty International caudillo, Patrick Holmes. They have urged the desperate plight of the economic refugees. Doubtless they have suffered grievously, and New Zealand beckons as a wonderland. Even the poorest in New Zealand would be comparatively rich to them. They have urged pity as a motivation to accept and welcome these folk. We reiterate: these are the consistent Commentariat members.
Others in the Commentariat are emphatic in their refusal to have anything to do with the boat people. Their posturing is empty. Offensively hypocritical. The entire ethos of New Zealand is built upon the principle that all people, by right of being human, have a legitimate and just claim to a certain amount of other people's property. Call it "a living wage", a "fair go", maintaining dignity--whatever. It's all the same in the end. The supreme authority, our semi-divinised state, has both a duty and license to extract property by force from some and deliver it to others who have less. Everybody believes this. Except Christians who read their Bibles, but they don't count. Sure, the Commentariat maintains an inter-mural argument about how much extraction, and upon which subjects it will be bestowed, and on what terms and conditions, but these are mere details. Everyone acknowledges the universal principle of the thing.
Why, then, the emphatic rejection of the boat people? Why are they "beyond the pale"? Are they not human? Do they not have economic rights? Does not their being human entitle them to a just extraction by force from others better off to make them more economically equal? Apparently not. Why? we wonder. Out of one side of his mouth our Prime Minister argues vehemently for involuntary seizure of the property of some (via taxation) and for its distribution to others, appealing to justice, rectitude, and rights. Everybody, everybody agrees--apart from those obnoxious Christians who read their Bibles. But out of the other side of his mouth he brusquely rejects these desperate folk.
When it's boat people, the universal principles of human rights are suddenly found to have geographic limitations. Our gods turn out to be local deities after all. Our self-righteous, simpering notions of justice transform into harsh xenophobia, just like that. Who would have thought.
The Commentariat has some explaining to do. If the goose's sauce is withheld from the gander we smell hypocrisy in the kitchen. Maybe the high faluting principles of Unbelief are worthless and empty, venal and self-serving? Maybe justice and rights are not universal after all, but have geographical boundaries. But if so, why not local body limitations? Why not provincial boundaries? In other words, universal rights are either ubiquitously relevant and applicable, or not at all.
Clearly the Commentariat does not believe our religious version of economic human rights is universal. Therefore, it has no legitimate application in New Zealand either. Extraction of property from some to bestow it upon others is nothing other than trafficking in stolen goods. Imagine--our entire society built upon a grand edifice of theft. Conjuring appeals to universal human rights are merely a Klingon cloaking device disguising that our nation is, underneath it all, one vast criminal enterprise.
Bless those Sri Lankan boat people for de-cloaking our pretentious hypocrisy. And, yes, may the Living God have mercy upon them.
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