The NZ Greenists have elected a new co-leader of their party. Free market secularist, Rodney Hide explains how it took him but a few hours to fall out of love.
This professed hatred of the free market is histrionic nonsense. Since in this context "market" refers to an exchange of goods and services, the adjective "free" refers to participants in that exchange doing so without an external authority controlling the exchange. The opposite of a free market is a controlled and regulated market. Which is to say the new Greens leader believes the "time of the orc has come" and now exchanges of goods and services will forthwith be controlled and regulated by the ultimate secular authority--the gummint.I can't help falling out of love again
Rodney HideI've fallen out of love with Green co-leader Jamie Shaw. It didn't take long. Our political honeymoon lasted less than a day. He declared "free market capitalism dead". I get that he doesn't like free markets. He's a Green. He's a politician. He wants to boss us around. People being free to choose is anathema to him.
But to declare the free market dead? What is he saying? That no one now supports free markets? That's not true. There's me. Or is he saying that there are no free markets? Has he never been on TradeMe, shopped in a supermarket or been to a food hall?
Free market capitalism is rampant and everything that we need is produced by it: food, shelter, internet and smartphones. Countries previously starving have grown rich in a generation through free market capitalism. We have more free trade than ever. There's more private property. Profit and loss rules and consumers are king. Politicians and bureaucrats are increasingly marginalised. They don't have the power and control they once had. They don't like it but that doesn't make the free market dead. It's alive and well and feeding the world.
It's always of some comfort to believe that one is surfing the wave of history. Clearly the new Greens co-leader, Mr Shaw believes he is riding the great wave and that time and tide are enabling him to surge onward to rule, regulate, command and control humans exchanging goods. The Greens want to erect, once again, the Great Tyranny over men where an absolute authority tells everyone what is good for them. It was tried repeatedly in the previous century. It failed miserably, amidst starvation and death, destruction and devastation on every side. It will fail again, with similar results.
As always, the Greens are masters of hypocrisy. They are Sharkey to the Shire.
It's a line that may go down a treat with Green Party faithful but it shows they have another leader too shallow and too lazy to think and debate. That's the last thing the Greens need. To be fair, there were early inklings of trouble between us. For a start, it proved a one-way thing: he ran a mile when I endorsed him. Then I learned he doesn't have a driver's licence. Being driven around by others doesn't reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Imagine the conversation. "I don't drive. I'm saving the planet. But could you pick me up around eight?"The Greens have no god but the state. Just a few more controls, rules, and rations and then nirvana will break out upon the beach. That's how is starts. It ends in slavery and degradation. Always. The Green nirvana is a cluster of starving people, amidst moulding bodies on the sand. It's called the Green Wave.
His rival for leadership, Kevin Hague, in a non-Green outburst, attacked Shaw as too metrosexual. Only in the Greens could a homosexual attack a rival as metrosexual. I had to look it up the meaning of the word. Hague's outburst confirms that the Greens with their choice of leader don't quite live on the planet they desperately believe needs them.
They live far away from the productive world sipping their lattes up the Aro Valley following the latest green fad on their smartphones. "Oh, no fossil fuels. They're stinky. They're cooking the planet. I don't even drive." Their entire lifestyle is driven off fossil fuels. They fly in jets, hook up to the internet and wear the latest clothes. They live on the backs of farmers, miners, loggers and fishermen. They don't reject their taxpayer dollars as coming from dirty fuels.
And now my former pin-up boy wants to run the country on a learner plate.
2 comments:
This is so obviously true yet a good friend who is a retired Anglican minister loves the left, all the protest movements that align with them and hates America. I cannot reconcile this with his clear and faithful Christianity. We agree to disagree on much but he is infuriatingly blinkered about the terrible history of communism and its offshoots.
He is firm of all authority as being from God so we have to completely obey the secular rule (and quotes the Bible to support this view). Maybe that suits his very left world view but I cannot accept that I must do evil things because they're lawful.
3:16
Yes, it is most puzzling. It is one more example, one imagines, of Israel swearing allegiance to the Lord whilst still worshipping idols on the high places because their rulers told them to. Elijah would have been "right" to bow down to the Baal of Ahab and Jezebel. On your friend's basis, Jesus would never have been crucified, since He would have obeyed the authorities and taught as they commanded.
JT
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