The Gift Horse Now Inside Troy's City Walls

Conservative values? That now means forcing your children into sex lessons

By PETER HITCHENS

Mail on Sunday

PUBLISHED: 12:40 AEDT, 3 March 2019 | UPDATED: 13:34 AEDT, 3 March 2019

Revolutionaries love to indoctrinate children. You can look up yourself who said these words: 'When an opponent declares, 'I will not come over to your side', I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already… What are you? You will pass on.  Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.' '

But it does not really matter who it was. It is horribly true, and it is what all these meddlers think and why they are all so keen on getting control of schools and youth movements.

+6

Revolutionaries love to indoctrinate children. You can look up yourself who said these words: 'When an opponent declares, 'I will not come over to your side'

This week, they took a great step towards their goal, which is the eradication of all that is left of conservative Christian opinion in this country.

Guest Post: Bruce Logan

The Charities Board Versus Natural Law


Bruce Logan
Board Member
Family First NZ

The attempt by the Charities Board to deregister Family First, if successful, would be a watershed, not just for Family First, but for the whole country. It is unlikely that Family First will ever find itself defending any issue of greater importance.

Deregistration would be a legal victory for those ideologues who would take power away from the family and give it to the state.  The irony is that this might not be their intention, they might not know this is what they’re doing, but that will be the consequence nevertheless.

The Charities Board believes that the primary purpose of Family First is to “promote and protect its view of the traditional family through advocating its view on various social issues.”  This is a reductionist understanding of what Family First is doing.

The term “traditional family” is inadequate because it is only part of the story. “Natural family” is a precise, useful and rational term.  The natural family is biologically determined, intergenerational and rationally and historically observable. The natural family is the consequence of the sexual nature of men and women. It is not a subjective or ideological or religious construction.

Canada's Brave New World

Off To See the Wizard

A study done in Canada in 1992 concluded that Canada has set up a tax code which provided incentives for the break-up of families.  Probably this was not an intended effect, but it has become an actual effect of the tax code.

According to the study,

In Canada . . . a married couple with three children earning $60,000 per year in 1992 was liable for $17,824 in income taxes if the income came from one worker.  But if the husband got a less-demanding job and sent the wife to work, the same income was taxed at only $10,725.  If they then got divorced and cohabited, the tax dropped to $7,580.  [Angelo Codevilla, The Character of Nations: How Politics Makes and Breaks Prosperity, Family, and Civility (New York: Basic Books, 1997), p. 163.]

It pays never to forget that at root Economic Man--the drive to get a good bargain in all economic exchanges--is represented prodigiously throughout the population.  Without thinking of the long term consequences, if it seems a good deal to work less, send the wife out to work, and hey pretso you will be better off by a substantial margin, then let's fill up the biggest shopping trundler we can find with those goodies.  More for less.  What a deal.

The Apogee of Self-Deceit

Punched Drunk, and Slurred Speech

One of the moral depredations facing the West is self-deceit.  This perverse characteristic is manifest amongst elites, the Chattering Classes, the mass media, the Commentariat, universities and colleges, and so on.  The West is afflicted with a profound intellectual dishonesty.  

The pugilist ring in which this deceit is seen most clearly is the fight over the family.  In the left corner sits the protagonist for homosexual "marriage".  Lean, limbered up, at the peak of condition, and in the best fighting weight for decades, Mr or Mz Homosexual Marriage has defeated opponents in every pugilist ring in the country.  There is a spring of inevitable victory in the Champ's footsteps as s/he steps forth to engage in yet another triumphalist bout.  At last the great victory has been won.  Marriage, that holy institution ordained by Almighty God, is now extended to practitioners of homo-erotic sex.  Mighty Man has given God a lesson, an almighty thrashing, one may say.  

A thousand questions are suddenly begged--and not just begged.  They demand attention and answers.

Take Nothing For Granted

The Basics of Life

Now, more than ever, it seems, Christian families need to take their life-compass readings from the Scriptures and not from society-at-large.  In former generations that may not have been such an urgent and pressing issue.  In days of a more Christian culture being evident, taking advice and getting instruction from society at large may have been less of a danger.  Not so now.

A venerable Christian family's statement of faith was often seen adorning the walls of many Christian homes:

Christ is the Head of this house
The unseen Guest at every meal
The silent Listener to every conversation.

 It reinforced the truth that for the Christian family, Christ is central.  He is the ultimate family head, its ruler, leader, counsellor, disciplinarian, guide, and shepherd.  The Christian home and family is a holy place.  Not a sinless place, mind.  But a holy place, where everything is dealt with according to the Scriptures.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.  [Deuteronomy 6: 4-9]

The norm for a Christian home is that the children will grow up to say that they cannot recall a time when they did not believe in God, but that all their lives they have known and followed Christ.

Good News

Glad Tidings of Great Joy

Sometimes folk debate what love and kindness "looks like".  Here is an example of what love looks like in the spheres of community and family.  There have been at least a couple of reports [TheBlaze and TodayNews] about this incident and its backstory, and we have drawn upon both.

'All I could do was hug him' 

Grad, 18, reunites with firefighter who saved her as a baby

Last Sunday was a landmark occasion for 18-year-old Skyler James, and not just because she celebrated graduating from high school.  For the first time, she also got to meet the firefighter who, on a bitterly cold November morning in 1995, found her — a newborn baby — abandoned beneath a snow-laden pine tree in an Illinois cemetery.  “It’s so amazing to be able to know the person who saved my life,” Skyler told TODAY.com. “Without him I probably wouldn’t be here right now.”

Bonnie and Greg James of Charleston, Ill., adopted Skyler five days after firefighter Charlie Heflin discovered her under that tree. The couple told Skyler the story of how she joined their family as soon as she was old enough to understand. When Skyler was 5, Bonnie James began searching for Heflin in the phone books of nearby communities, but without any luck. . . . [TodayNews]

Books

How the West Really Lost God 

An Interview with Mary Eberstadt 

Justin Taylor 
July 10 2013

 Mary Eberstadt, Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC, is widely hailed as “one of the most acute and creative social observers of our time” (Francis Fukuyama). George Will has called her “intimidatingly intelligent,” and George Weigel says she is “our premier analyst of American cultural foibles and follies, with a keen eye for oddities that illuminate just how strange the country’s moral culture has become.”

In her latest book, How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization,  she seeks to answer the question “How and why has Christianity really come to decline in important parts of the West?”  Her answer cuts against the conventional wisdom, but Jonathan V. Last argues “you cannot understand the real philosophical problems of the West without reading this book."

Mrs. Eberstadt was kind enough to answer a few questions about her argument and its implications.

What led you to write How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization? Did it begin more as a hypothesis to be tested or a thesis to be proved?

Like many Americans who have visited Europe, I was struck repeatedly by how secular some of the Continent’s societies are and how empty their churches. So the first reason I started researching into theories of secularization was simple curiosity: What makes formerly Christian precincts lose God?

Homosexual "Marriage"

Hypocrisy and Special Pleading

The arguments swirling around the crusade for homosexual "marriage" have been playing out pretty much as expected.  One argument by those opposed has been to employ reductio ad absurdum: if homosexual "marriage" is approved today, tomorrow (or some time in the future) society will be legitimising polygamy, polyandry, incest, and paedophilia.

This argument has been mocked and lampooned by homosexual "marriage" proponents--who have resorted to the most superficial and spurious rebuttal.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Father-Driven Adoption 

Culture and Politics - Sex and Culture
Written by Douglas Wilson
Friday, 19 October 2012

We live in polarized times, and it shows up in many issues. One of the unfortunate consequences of this is that if you say that a particular course of action might have any negative consequences anywhere, you must be against that course of action. You must be an enemy of it. If you think home schooling, for example, could ever end badly, you must be against home schooling. This does not follow, and if the sensitivities of our illogical age  are honored, the results will be increasingly bad.

We have gotten to the point where knowledge that some people flunk math classes is taken as a deep conviction (on the part of the person who knows it) that math classes ought not to be taken. No . .  perhaps a person should enroll in them with an accurate understanding of what it is going to take. Trying to get people prepared is not the same thing as scaring them off.

I say this because I want to urge a central caution about adoption, and I want to do so as someone who honors and respects those who have counted the cost and who have done it right. May their tribe increase, and God bless all of them.

Idolatry and Maori Child Abuse, Part II

The Destiny of Those Maori Remaining in New Zealand

We have spoken of the great Maori diaspora—many of whom have left New Zealand to escape the pervasive influence of Maori whanau culture, which hangs as an albatross around their necks. We believe it to be an indirect cause of the high incidence of child abuse amongst Maori today.

The problem with whanau culture is that it elevates the whanau above the nuclear family, thus undermining the roles and responsibilities of parents to their own children. It represents a rejection of God's command that a man shall leave his parents and shall cleave to his wife when he marries. In modern Maori culture, whanau claims regularly supersede and trump the legitimate claims of children upon their own parents. This, in turn, entices and tempts far too many Maori parents to look to their extended families to take over what it is their responsibility to provide for their own children. This has led to the neglect of Maori children, since passing responsibility over to the whanau for one's children fails far too often. The extended family has not soul to damn and no butt to kick. All too often no one couple ends up standing as a strong tower of refuge for vulnerable children. Shared parenting all to often produces neglected children who slip through cracks.

A third reason for such an appalling record of child abuse within Maori communities is state welfare. Sir Apirana Ngata is reported to have said, when social welfare was first introduced by Michael Savage, that “this will be the death of our people”. To be sure, it has been the death of a good many pakeha as well. But Maori have proved particularly susceptible to its deadly effects. We believe the reason is the combination of secular state welfarism with Maori whanau culture. Maori extended families and whanau socialism easily combine with the ideology and values of state welfarism to make a destructive and deadly cocktail. Sir Apirana Ngata was right.

The whanau socialist model was already in place when European Fabian socialism was institutionalised in New Zealand in the nineteen-thirties by the first Labour government. Because whanau socialism already undermined private property rights, and forced many Maori families to look to the whanau for economic support and sustenance, it was a small step for Maori to extend this beyond their extended family to the government. Hence Maori to this day have been strong supporters of socialist political doctrines and institutions. Their culture leads them to regard national social welfare as intrinsically right and therefore receiving support from other people not only an ethnic right, but a fundamental civil right as well. Maori are culturally inclined to socialism and progressive political and economic doctrines fit hand in glove with Maori cultural beliefs.

Those who argue that it is relative Maori poverty which inclines them to socialist doctrines over-simplify the case. Relative Maori poverty continues entrenched first and foremost because the economic demands of the whanau keep many Maori families in a state of poverty and dependency. In such a culture if any Maori family prospers, their economic obligations to their blood relatives rise. Consequently children rapidly become dependent upon “others” and when the increasingly impoverished whanau will not provide, Maori naturally look to the state. It is just exchanging one form of socialism for another.

Welfare dependent families, which are disproportionately represented in the Maori population, often reproduce their welfare dependency, binding the next generation to degradation and destruction. Husbands and fathers as providers become an optional extra. Women become the dominant adult in such families because welfare is normally dolled out by the State through and around the power matrix of mother or the woman who happens to be the designated care-giver du jour. In such a degraded state, children easily become an economic tool, a means of extracting more money from government. Welfarism leads to inter-generational cycles of poverty, which causes and results in the neglect and abuse of children. Throwing more money at the “problem” is the worst possible thing that could be done. It is also the most naïve, simplistic, and stupid.

Does this mean that Maori are beyond hope? Not at all. This is not primarily an ethnic or cultural problem. It is a spiritual problem. Religious constructs have pervasive cultural consequences. False and wrong religious constructs normally have pervasively bad cultural consequences. But Maori are not beyond the grace of God; His hand is not shortened that it cannot save. There is a great need in our day for biblically informed teachers to help Maori Christians, in this particular instance, reform their ethnic cultural inheritance around the constructs of the Scripture, to enable the development of a reformed Christian Maori culture and a reconstruction of biblical families. This will necessitate a rejection of aspects of the whanau culture and a reformation of those aspects which are redeemable. The need is great.

It is from the Church and the Believing community that the answers and help will come, not from more government-extorted welfare and a paradigm of victim-entitlement. Let us pray for the Lord to raise up Maori leadership which will completely reject the ungodly claims of whanau upon Maori families and the much vaunted “Maori way of doing things”. Such racial and ethnic pride is completely unbecoming true faith in God. Maori long ago tragically decided they would adapt the pakeha's God to their own way of thinking. Maori must reject such pernicious idolatry.

Let us ask God to raise up Maori who will call for Maori to repent of their Unbelieving cultural assault upon biblical marriage and family. The idol of whanau-uber-family must be broken and Maori must do it—in faith, with their eyes upon the Lord, not upon the State.

One final word—some may be wondering whether Brian Tamaki and the Destiny Church might be the first signs of a reformation within Maoridom back to biblical faith. We fear not. Without discounting or denigrating whatever good Destiny may have done, we believe it is right at the point of neglecting to reject the idolatry of whanau culture that Brian Tamaki and the Destiny Church have failed the Maori people. To our mind they have simply substituted the blood whanau culture for an ecclesiastical whanau culture. The prior claims of the ecclesiastical whanau—which has elided across from the ethnic whanau culture—continue to undermine the biblical insistence on the primary authority of the nuclear Christian family.

To this extent we believe Destiny represents a false dawn and a pseudo-reformation. You cannot serve God and mammon. You cannot give the old household idols a new coat of paint and claim, thereby, that you are serving the Living God. The God of our fathers, it will do us all well to recall, commands first and foremost that there will be no other gods brought into His holy presence.

May it please God to be gracious to the people at Destiny and lead them to understand this. May He also once again remember mercy to those Maori who remain in New Zealand.

Idolatry and Maori Child Abuse, Part I

Whanau Culture's Collateral Damage

There was a small furore inside the Wellington beltway two weeks ago when Paula Bennett, Minister of Social Development had the temerity to suggest that Maori elites and the controllers of millions of dollars of Maori assets had a responsibility to commit more resources to looking after their own Maori children. The reason is that whilst representing around ten percent of the population, Maori account for 50% of the children identified on government roles as being at risk—which is to say, they don't have parents or caregivers that either parent or give proper care.

The risible response of the Green co-leader Turei was to accuse the Minister of racism. Such a response must be dismissed contemptuously. But, it begs the question: why are Maori children at such risk? Always the reasons are complex. We do not mean this sarcastically. Life is complex; all human culture is complex; it is exceedingly thick, with layer upon layer of reality (as God has wonderfully ordained it to be). Turning a culture so that it moves in a different direction is a complex undertaking—too complex for any one agency to achieve. Impossible for government agencies—for God has not ordained such tasks for government.

In general, however, Maori elites and those who control the power structures within Maoridom are agreed on where the problems lie and what the solution must be. To them the solution is monocular and straightforward: more money. Or, to be more precise, more of other people's money. Money poured forth is the simplistic naïve materialist solution offered. Yet the majority of non-Maori power elites would agree. So, the only debate in our society over the solution to the plight of Maori children is how much money of other people's money can be delivered, and by whom. The right generally argues for lesser amounts, citing the weak economy, national debt levels and so on, whilst the left always argues for more. The Maori party, in turn, always argues for much, much more.

It is noteworthy that the recent brouhaha was, once again, over money. The Minister of Social Development was arguing for more money for at risk Maori children—but was trying to source it from Maori elites (those tribal leaders who control the billions of dollars in various tribal settlements for historical grievances genuine and manufactured). For some reason, beyond the ken of rational people, this was deemed racist.

Why does Maoridom have such an appalling childcare record? (We generalise, of course. There are many salutary and excellent Maori parents, and fine Maori families. Sadly, however, they are relatively smaller in proportion to their population than non-Maori ethnicities.) Why?

Whilst the reasons are legion, there are at least three which we believe are the more pernicious. The first is the degradation of the nuclear family at the expense of extended family or whanau. Maori apologists have hailed their whanau-culture as a point of great superiority over pakeha culture. The paradigm of the extended family, we are told, means that every child grows up within a community of blood relatives, aunts and uncles, cousins, and more distant blood relatives. The whanau culture creates a bond of responsibility to many children, not just one's own. Children ostensibly grow up within a far wider and richer group of adults and children. Any weakness in parents can be compensated by the influence of the wider whanau.

Western culture is seen as inferior at this point, for the nuclear family is believed to be narrow, isolated, restricted and shallow. It does not have the breadth, colour, depth, and richness of an extended family structure.

To be sure, an extended and strong community, whether based on blood or other bonds should be a great blessing—but, and it is a colossal “but”, the extended community in the long run is destructive unless it takes up its roles and responsibilities upon the foundation of strong nuclear family structures. A true oneness of the community can only be sustained upon the solid ground of many strong nuclear families. When the community is misshapen to where it substitutes for a nuclear family, the outcome is most often destructive.

The problem is that the extended family has no soul to damn and no butt to kick. The whanau concept, as currently manifested within Maoridom, does not hold birth parents primarily accountable and responsible for their children. A major reason so many Maori children are neglected is that it is impossible to hold a community accountable for their care; there is no primary caregiver by definition. Thus, the Maori concept of whanau has in general become a hindrance to the proper care of children. Until Maori acknowledge that God gives children to parents first and foremost, and only to the community secondarily and indirectly, and that He holds birth parents responsible and accountable, and until Maori reform their whanau culture accordingly, high rates of child abuse amongst Maori will likely continue.

A second major cause of putting children at risk is the concept of whanau socialism—which of course is related to the first. Maori parents are inculcated in the heinous idea that commitments to whanau supersede their duties and commitments to their own children. So, when somebody dies all are obligated to attend the tangi, often taking days off work; all are obligated to contribute. Maori parents are continually needing to expend their cash and assets upon extended family obligations—most often at the expense of the care and provision for their own children. And when such impoverished families get into strife, whanau socialism makes it acceptable to cast them upon the whanau for care and help—as a sort of payback or return for having been a dutiful whanau member.

Many Maori have migrated to Australia for this reason: to escape the perpetual impoverishment that comes from the never-ceasing demands of the extended family upon their income, time, resources, and assets. The obligation to “share” and pay koha are often overwhelming. Until Maori cleanse their culture of such notions, and build their communities upon the principles of the sanctity of private property; the rejection of theft and immoral expropriation of the property of others; a rejection of whanau claims upon the income and assets of extended family members, and affirm the fundamental truth that commitments and duties to one's own children are more important than duties to one's whanau, high rates of neglect of children will continue.

The latter principle of commitment to one's marriage and family being more important and a higher priority than commitment to one's extended family is, of course, derived from the beginning of the human race, where God declared and commanded that a man, in marriage, should leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife. The modern whanau socialist model at root constitutes a rebellion against this divine plan and command. Evil consequences always flow when individuals and cultures think themselves smarter than the Living God.

God will not be mocked—and the truth of this is showing up in the incidence of child abuse amongst Maori.