Treaty of Waitangi Fables, Part III

Tribalism Makes Some Animals More Equal Than Most

This is the third piece recently seeing the light of day in the NZ Herald confronting the historical revisionism being foisted upon the Treaty of Waitangi and its signing.   Dr Elizabeth Rata takes up the issue of Maori tribalism and argues that it is incompatible with a democratic form of government.

Elizabeth Rata: Tribalism, democracy incompatible

5:30 AM Tuesday Jan 29, 2013

Tribalism is based on principles of inequality. Democracy is based on equality. So unity is only way forward.

The post-1987 idea of a Treaty ‘partnership’ is not true to the original Treaty. Photo / Alexander Turnbull Library

The recent Herald commentary by Ewen McQueen takes us further into a thoughtful consideration of the Treaty of Waitangi and the constitution. Using Sir Joseph Ward’s metaphor that “there can only be one sun in the sky”, McQueen showed why the post-1987 idea of a Treaty “partnership” is not true to the original Treaty. He concluded by noting that most chiefs agreed to give absolutely to the Queen the complete government over their land in return for guaranteed protection of chieftainship.

According to McQueen the constitutional review may help us find new ways for chieftainship to be expressed. I agree, the issue of chieftainship is crucial to the current national discussion convened by the Government’s Constitutional Advisory Panel. So what is the chieftainship issue?

If chieftainship still exists to be “expressed” then so too must the tribal political system of 1840 also exist. After all, to exercise chieftainship one must be a chief of something. This does appear to be the case. Who can ignore the existence of iwi today? The revived tribes go from strength to strength. It seems self-evident that the tribal kinship system that framed traditional Maori society is alive and well, albeit in a modernised form.

A lot rides on this point. Present-day iwi insist that they are the inheritors of the past. Their claims for greater political power, even constitutionally recognised power, and for vast economic resources follow from this premise of tribal revival. The vital importance of the Treaty is as the document of iwi inheritance, hence iwi leaders insistence that the Treaty be included in the nation’s constitution.

Yet how can a traditional tribal system be revived when it was destroyed by democracy? Tribalism and democracy are incompatible – they cannot exist together as political systems in the one nation. As the late New Zealand historian Professor Peter Munz noted, the condition for democracy is everywhere the end of tribalism with its birth-ascribed inequality and exclusive kin membership.

The incompatibility goes deep into the very structure of politics. Tribalism is based on principles of inequality. Democracy is based on equality. Kin status is what matters in the tribe; citizenship is the democratic status. Tribalism is exclusive. To belong you must have ancestors who were themselves born into the system. Democracy by contrast includes people from all backgrounds. The matter of who is included and who is excluded touches all areas of New Zealand life. Many New Zealand families have members who are Maori and members who are non-Maori. What would it mean for New Zealand if this division were to become a political division throughout every level of our institutions?

Those wanting to place the Treaty into New Zealand’s Constitution must address the implications of the fundamental incompatibility between democracy and tribalism if the constitutional review is to have any real purpose. The equality versus inequality, inclusion versus exclusion incompatibility goes deep into the very nature of the political system. Democracy has three elements: the nation, the state, and the citizen. The nation is the overall framework and idea we have of ourselves as the nation New Zealand. The state is parliament and all the institutions and systems of government. Citizens are the subjects of the nation-state and have rights that flow from along with responsibilities to the system.

The principle of universalism is the base upon which these three elements rest. Indeed, democracy could only become a political system once this principle was widely accepted. Universalism justifies the equal status of the citizen. It justifies our human rights, including the right to have a cultural or religious identity. Democratic universalism doesn’t rule out various forms of cultural identity within the one nation. Tribalism does. Democracy separates political status from cultural/racial identity. Tribalism is unable to do so.

The place of religion in New Zealand is a good example of the division between political status and identity. Many New Zealanders have a religion but their religious identity is not part of the political arrangements, although the right to exercise their religion is. Race and culture are like religion – an identity but not a political status. We meet in the political sphere as equal citizens not as members of a religion, a race, or a tribe.

For this reason race or cultural identity cannot be included as a political status in a constitution. What a constitution can include, and New Zealand’s constitution already does, is the right that each individual has to exercise his or her cultural identity. It is a right enshrined in legislation which protects the ongoing identification people may have with their racial heritage. It is a right that can exist only because of our equal status as citizens, a status that comes from the universalist principle that we are all equal as human beings. The right of people to belong to and practise their iwitangi in society at large but outside the political sphere is guaranteed by democracy’s principle of human rights.

This takes me back to the question of chieftainship. Can chieftainship be exercised in a democracy? The comparison with religion holds the answer. Just as bishops and priests lost their considerable political power to democracy’s system of accountable leadership, so too must today’s iwi leaders accept the same limitations. Their influence on the political system should be that of any other social organisation or business corporation. Just as one sun is the sky is true for the nation’s sovereignty so it is true for our institutions.

Democracy can only exist in one unified nation with a constituted government accountable to its equal citizens. Its three elements must stand united upon the foundation of the universal human being.

Dr Elizabeth Rata is an associate professor in the School of Critical Studies at the University of Auckland and a member of the Independent Constitutional Review Panel.

 
 

Poisonous Green Shoots

The Egyptian Spring Unveiled

Constitutions of nation states serve as the highest, or entrenched law of the land.  The constitution cannot be discarded or changed by an act of Parliament or Congress.  Rather, the legislative and executive and judicial branches of government are bound by the precepts and governing arrangements laid out in a constitution.

In order to function effectively as a limit to state power and a protector of the civil rights of subjects, the governing powers and the law courts need to submit themselves to the constitution.  The ultimate defender and enforcer of sanctions upon those who violate a constitution is “we the people”.  It is for this reason that the recently adopted Egyptian constitution will be an abject failure.  In the plebiscite held to adopt the constitution, 60 percent approved it, but only 30 percent voted which implies that the brand new Egyptian constitution enjoys not more than 18 percent national support.

The Egyptian constitution, then, is an irrelevance.
  The whole exercise has been a charade to enforce the grip of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood upon the nation.  Richard Spencer, writing in The Telegraph from Cairo, explains why it has been a charade:

Among the many charges levelled against the constitution by both human rights groups, secular and liberal activists, and the Coptic Christian minority, is that its defence of basic freedoms is heavily curtailed when it comes to religion and politics. Specifically, it will forbid any law that would permit anything deemed insulting either of people or of religion, the Prophet Mohammed or the other figures considered by Islam to be God’s messengers. Such a clause could clearly have a chilling effect on free thinking and speech.

How chilling? Well, here is a case in point:

When Alber Saber’s mother called police to protect him from a mob baying for his blood, something odd happened: they arrested him. They then threw him in prison, encouraged his cellmates to attack him, and finally took him to court where he was jailed for three months. . . .

The mob in his Cairo suburb accused him of atheism and disrespect of the Prophet Mohammed, and demanded he be killed; a neighbour had alleged he had posted to his Facebook page the now notorious Islam-mocking video that triggered protests across the world in September. His mother, Kariman Ghali, cries frequently as she describes visiting him in prison the day after the mob surrounded their apartment block.”He had blood all over his T-shirt,” said Mrs Ghali, who claims her son was put in a wing reserved for dangerous inmates. “The policeman told the prisoners, ‘This guy insulted the Prophet, I want to see what you can do with him.’ Someone stabbed him with a razor.” He was then taken to another cell where the inmates were urged to see if they could outdo the first set.

This, dear readers, is what the naive Western Commentariat hailed as the Arab Spring–the dawning of a new era of freedom and prosperity for the Middle East. Our leaders, our media and our public intellectuals are simpletons.  There is no other word for it.  What has led them to such foolishness?  Two things.  Firstly, almost to a man they have agreed that religion is an irrelevance to public life and the civic square.  Secondly, they believe it to be axiomatic that democracy is a form of government which always serves to redeem people from oppression.

Anyone with a scintilla of understanding of humanity and how human beings actually behave knows that these two precepts are false.  Even a child would have known that the “Arab Spring” was really the passing of absolutist tyranny from one set of hands to another.  The only ones gulled into thinking otherwise were the stupid people that govern us and their cheerleaders.

The former regime’s torture chambers have now been re-opened and by all accounts are doing a roaring trade.

A chilling report recently published in the Egyptian newspaper, al-Masry al-Youm, reveals that the torture chambers once utilized by the Hosni Mubarak regime to tamp down protesters are being put to the same if not greater use by the country’s new, self-proclaimed dictator, Mohammed Morsi.

Despite the Obama administration and worldwide media’s insistence that the election of the Muslim Brotherhood leader was a watershed moment for democracy in the Middle East, it would seem those hopes are on a rapid downward trajectory as reports of savage beatings and brutality against Egyptian protesters, abound.

This disturbing revelation came to light just days ago when an al-Masry al-Youm reporter, with the help of a Brotherhood-owned and operated television station, was given an exclusive tour of the torture chambers. While one might think the decision to grant a journalist access to such a chilling look into the way the Muslim Brotherhood treats its critics as counter-intuitive, it makes perfect sense. After all, what could possibly ever serve as better warning for those even thinking of resisting Morsi’s push for a totalitarian regime based on sharia law than to know what will happen to them if they do?

Al-Monitor reports that the central torture chamber is located near the Ittihadiya Palace, just opposite the gates facing the Omar Ibn Abdel Aziz Mosque. The street is reportedly “secured with a cordon and iron barriers, where the Central Security Forces (CSF) barr any and all access without the authorization of the Brotherhood.  During the three-hour visit, the al-Masry reporter explained that “protesters suspected of working against the Muslim Brotherhood are tortured and beaten with the knowledge of the police before being handed over for formal detention.”

Al-Monitor provides an English translation of the al-Masry reporter’s account:

We entered the chamber with a great difficulty, after a fellow journalist from the Misr 25 TV channel facilitated. The channel is owned by the Brotherhood. There are brigades and police officers in military uniforms, as well as others in civilian clothes from al-Nozha police station, who oversee the beatings, whippings and torture. Fifteen others from the group, distinguished by their strong bodies, are supervised by three bearded and well-dressed men who decide who will be in the chamber and who may leave, even if the person is a member of the Brotherhood.
The torture process starts once a demonstrator who opposes President Mohammed Morsi is arrested in the clashes or is suspected after the clashes end, and the CSF separate Morsi’s supporters from his opponents. Then, the group members trade off punching, kicking and beating him with a stick on the face and all over his body. They tear off his clothes and take him to the nearest secondary torture chamber, from which CSF personnel, members of the Interior Ministry and the State Security Investigations Services (SSIS) are absent.

While perhaps not shocking to those who have long known of the Brotherhood’s penchant for violence and history as the parent of all major Islamic extremist groups (including al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, et al), the accounts are heartrending nonetheless. The torture was conducted right before the al-Masry reporter’s eyes in the hopes that he would share the information with fellow Egyptians as a warning. . . .

Will the Egyptian army once again intervene?  Maybe.  But if so, it will be one thuggish organization taking over from another.

The ultimate cause of Egyptian absolutist tyranny is Allah, the idol god of Islam, feared and revered by almost all Egyptians.  Allah is like Baal of old–the god of absolute state power.  Those who believe genuinely and seriously are committed to institutionalising Allah’s absolute rule in everything.  His servants have license to oppress and force compliance at every turn.  The peace of Islam is the peace of enforced subjugation.

Allah’s ultimate temple is the state, but as the account above shows–the mob tyrannising opponents and those who disagree also serves Allah’s purpose. 

It remains true that the greatest enemy of Islamic peoples is Islam itself.  The greatest bloodshed of Islamic peoples will continue to be at the hands of other Muslims.  It is for this reason that, for our part, we must continue to pray the Lord Jesus that He would have mercy upon Islamic peoples and deliver them from the darkness and tyranny under which they labour.  In their dark, savage oppression may they see the light of His rising.

Revolution by Stealth

Divisive Politics; Destructive Outcomes

In a recent hearing at the High Court the attempt by the Maori Council and Tainui to get a court judgment that Maori have de facto proprietary rights over water by virtue of being Maori was rejected.  No doubt Maori will pursue the case to the Supreme Court.  The way the case played was interesting. 

Justice Young found (amongst other things) that the Government (which the Maori Council was seeking a judgment against) had been acting according to the law of the land.  Here is a key part of the judgment:

No review of Parliament by the Courts is permitted in law. This is effectively what the claimants have asked this Court to do in these proceedings.

That particular statement goes to the heart of a matter which has been festering in New Zealand for years.  Maori have told themselves, and persuaded many others, they they have authority and mana which is equal to that of Parliament.  This is the implicit consequence of claiming that Maori, as signatories to the Treaty of Waitangi, are Treaty Partners or co-Regents with the Crown. 

There are two kinds of treaties.
The first is a treaty amongst equal partners.  Free trade agreements (treaties) are modern example.  The second is a treaty between a superior and an inferior party.  The Treaty of Waitangi is clearly the latter: Maori ceded sovereignty to the Crown.  For the past forty years Maori have increasingly asserted the Treaty represents an agreement between co-equal partners.  Most people in New Zealand have simply nodded and shrugged.  We are all being duped by revisionist history being propagated to give one component of the population special powers and higher rights.  This contention has been acceded to by successive governments and has been reflected in numerous court decisions. 

It has been a soft revolution.  Justice Young’s decision throws a monkey wrench into the Maori propaganda machine.  We will await the outcome of a review by any higher court.  But clearly Justice Young is correct: the constitution of New Zealand has Parliament as the supreme court of the land, our highest authority.  The courts cannot override Parliament, or review decisions taken by Government under legislative authority.

Maori and its supporters have been arguing for a different constitution: Maori and Parliament as co-equal authorities.  They have won lots of hearts and minds amongst the Left, the Commentariat, and the universities: it has been constitutional overthrow by stealth.  Since Maori don’t have enough votes, they have sought to use the courts (successfully to a significant extent) to recognize rights and powers not granted to them by voters. 

Dr Elizabeth Rata is an associate professor in the Education Faculty at Auckland University and a member of the Independent Constitution Review Panel.  She has written a very important piece in the NZ Herald confronting these very issues.  It is so important, we reproduce it in full.

Dr Elizabeth Rata: Treaty no longer symbol of national unity

5:30 AM Thursday Dec 13, 2012 

 

Concerns over erosion of democracy are behind opposition to inclusion of the pact in governing arrangements.

I was surprised to read in Deborah Coddington’s recent Herald column that the Treaty of Waitangi is New Zealand’s founding document. Of course some New Zealanders mistakenly believe that is the case.

Where the belief becomes a problem is when a member of the Government appointed and funded Constitutional Advisory Panel such as Deborah Coddington states that this is so.

In describing the Treaty as our founding document she has jumped the gun somewhat in anticipating the panel’s recommendations about the status of the Treaty. And she is certainly premature in gauging New Zealanders’ opinions on the subject. Attempts by successive governments since the 1987 Treaty re-interpretation as a “partnership”, including the expensive 2006 Treaty Roadshow, seemed to have been based on the misguided assumption that if New Zealanders knew about the Treaty then they would accept its increasing inclusion in the nation’s political system.

Deborah Coddington appears to think along similar lines.  However the rejection of Treaty politics by many is not from ignorance but from being only too aware of the profoundly undemocratic nature of political arrangements proposed by Treaty activists within all levels of government.

This rejection of Treaty politics has been the case for some time, despite the Road Show and an education system dedicated to promoting a Treaty-based biculturalism. Following two decades of biculturalism a 1999 survey of attitudes to the Treaty and the Waitangi Tribunal found that the Treaty “is a major point of division within the country”. Only 5 per cent of those surveyed “think that the Treaty should be strengthened and given the full force of law”. About 34 per cent want the Treaty abolished.

Ten years later, and despite considerable promotion, the Human Rights Commission’s annual progress report on Treaty issues for 2009 found declining numbers who agree that the Treaty is the country’s founding document. Since 2009, claims for public resources such as the foreshore and seabed and fresh water, along with claims for political control over those resources, has fuelled this widespread disquiet.

The entrenchment of attitudes opposing the inclusion of the Treaty in our governing arrangements is not based on a Maori non-Maori division. There are Maori and non-Maori of various ethnic backgrounds and cultural affiliations who are troubled by the implications of Treaty politics for democracy.

I consider it more accurate to put the dividing line between those who can be loosely grouped under the term “biculturalists” and those who maintain that “we are New Zealanders”.

For the latter New Zealand citizenship comes before ethnicity, cultural affiliation or religious belonging, although commitment to those identities may still be considered important. What guarantees a person’s political and legal status is what matters and that guarantee comes from being a New Zealand citizen, not from being a member of an ethnic group.

Biculturalists have morphed from the inclusive biculturalism of the early 1980s with its idealistic commitment to difference in unity to a separatist iwi politics. The first stage of iwi politics began in the late 1980s with the reinterpretation of the Treaty as a so-called “partnership”.

This saw the insertion of partnership principles into almost all New Zealand legislation. We are currently in the second stage – one that is hotting up with proposals before the Hauraki Gulf Forum for “co-governance” of the Gulf. This will cement in the so-called Treaty partnership and justify a place for the Treaty within a New Zealand Constitution.

Those who object to this, and I am one of these, do so for two strong reasons. Co-governance establishes a political system where the power and authority of one party, iwi, is unchallengeable.

That party is not appointed by the people and is not therefore accountable to the people. The undemocratic nature of co-governance is made worse by the criteria for belonging to the Treaty partner. Membership of iwi is fixed in genetic ancestry. Unlike democracy which allows for all comers, a group whose membership is fixed in the past has no room for newcomers.

The Treaty partnership model of co-governance will subvert the fundamental principles of democracy. Democracy is a political system of equality no matter what your heritage, and a system of accountability no matter what your race or religion. As equal citizens each of us can call our political leaders to account. If iwi as Treaty partner was co-governor we could not do so.

This makes the matter of the Treaty’s status of great importance to us all. To simply assert that the Treaty is our founding document, as Deborah Coddington has done, is not good enough.

Not only are there other contenders for the status of founding document (if we want one); the 1852 Constitutional Act springs to mind, but the strategic use of the Treaty in iwi politics to undermine democracy at all levels of our political system means that the Treaty is tainted as a symbol of national unity.

Long Live the Revolution

 Egyptian Progress

The hot air expended by President Obama’s to express thanks and congratulations to President Morsi of Egypt for his stirling work at achieving a cease fire in Gaza had barely dissipated when the same said Egyptian president awarded himself dictatorial powers.  Nice one, Mohammed.

There are two ways the West will respond to this inevitable lurch toward totalitarianism in Egypt.  The first will be to “Mubarakise” Morsi.  The West has had common cause with tyrants and authoritarian dictators in the Middle East for well nigh a hundred years.  It has “overlooked” one or two lapses of niceties in places like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Egypt so long as these dictators helped advance the global aspirations of Western ideological zealots in their vain attempt to lead the world to salvation.  Consequently, we expect Western nations to agree that President Morsi is a helpful and constructive leader who can be an ally in bringing peace and stability to the Middle East.

The second response will be to see betrayal in Morsi’s abrupt termination of Egypt’s move towards democracy.
  Morsi will be seen as letting the side down, of turning his back on democracy, limited government, and human rights.  So we expect a few muted protests from the folk at Amnesty International and similar entities.

Both responses are misguided and foolish.  In the first place, let’s be clear about what Morsi has done, as summarised by a piece in Al Jazeera:

Egypt’s Morsi assumes wide powers

President issues declaration sacking prosecutor general and giving himself judicial powers on top of legislative ones. 

Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi has issued a declaration giving himself sweeping powers that cannot be challenged by any authority.  The decree, which also dismissed Egypt’s prosecutor general, prompted  opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei to accuse Morsi of usurping authority and becoming a “new pharoah”.

“The president can issue any decision or measure to protect the revolution,” according to a decree read out on television by Yasser Ali, presidential spokesman. . . .

“. . .  there are those who are very concerned that this means that the president is overreaching his authority,” Al Jazeera‘s Greste said.”Remember that the parliament has been dissolved and that Morsi effectively made these decisions unilaterally. There can be no debate about this. This is now the law.” 

Al Jazeera‘s Sherine Tadros, also reporting from Cairo, said that rights groups in Egypt are concerned to see that Morsi “has given himself extraordinary powers”.  “Remember, he already had presidential powers, but also legislative powers … and now he’s given himself judicial powers. Also, another provision says that until there’s a new parliament elected, his decisions will  be final and can’t be challenged by any authority,” she said. . . .

Hassan Nafaa, professor of political science at Cairo University, told Al Jazeera that Morsi “is erecting himself as an absolute monarch”.  “He didn’t consult with anybody from the opposition, so he has taken all these decisions alone, without any consultation. The problem is not about the content of the decisions itself, but about the way it was taken,” he said. 

The second issue is to underscore that Morsi is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood–he and his party represent a policy of making Egypt an Islamic theocratic nation, a partial restoration of the Caliphate–a global Islamic empire.  Morsi represents not extremist Islam, but ordinary, mainstream political Islam.

The essence of Islamic belief and practice in all areas of life is Submission to Allah–a state into which society must enter willingly and voluntarily or via compulsion or force.  Islam has no church; it only has state power which is why it can co-exist quite well in lands ruled by Islamic military dictators.  There is no separation of church and state in Islam.  There is no doctrine of limited government, separation of powers, or a government of law and subject to law.  There is no concept of popular suffrage.  The essence of Islamic society is submission to Allah, which means submission to the authorities.  If you are an Islamic female you are a sub-human being that must submit to one’s husband, who in turn must submit to his clan chief or local ruler who in turn must submit to the sultan, or the House of Saud, or the Ayatollah or whatever.

Morsi’s actions, then, far from surprising are thoroughly consistent with Islam.  He is removing by fiat, by dictat, every locus of power and government that opposes him and his rule.  Allah wills it so.  Gone is the parliament and popular suffrage.  Gone is a judiciary independent of the president. He alone is left.

Plenty of non-Muslim Brotherhood folk have reacted to Morsi’s dictats.  They have taken to the streets.  But either they will be crushed, or Egypt will disintegrate, or the army will once again seize control.  Allah’s minions, like Sauron, cannot share power.  There can only be the Sultan (in whatever form) and cliques or factions vying for influence and control over him.

Egypt is being thoroughly Islamic and entirely consistent. 

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

Nullification or Nutterfication? 

Culture and Politics – Obama Nation Building
Written by Douglas Wilson
Tuesday, 10 July 2012

If your kayak is going over the falls, then the mainstream is the last place you would want to be. I say this because “mainstream” is not automatically a term of praise. At the same time, nobody wants to be a nutter just for grins, and so allow me to lay down some basic principles of Christian resistance to the kind of soft despotism we are up against.

By “soft” despotism, incidentally, I am talking about style, not results. Brave New World was every bit as hard and coercive as 1984, but soma was more fun for the recipient than having a jackboot in your face. Liberty is just as gone in either case. Sometimes hard seems hard, and sometimes it doesn’t. But it always is hard.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

Honest As White Paint

Mere Christendom
Written by Douglas Wilson
Friday, January 27, 2012

I have said kind things about Ron Paul in the past, and I will continue say them in the future. He continues to be one of the people I could vote for when Ringling Bros. finally brings the gaudy parade to my state. But he whiffed it last night in the debate when asked how his faith would affect his behavior in office. He said that it wouldn’t. Not only did he whiff it, but Santorum jacked it out of the park.

Santorum said, quite rightly, that the Constitution is the how of America, and the Declaration is the why. He said that government doesn’t give us our rights — God does that — and he said that the government’s role is to protect God-given rights. This was a dead-on bull’s eye.

Ron Paul’s formal position is therefore secularist. Now, of course, like all secularists, he is unable to actually keep these “disparate” elements of his worldview in separate compartments. The thing is impossible. But when you think you can do it, the result is generally a lot of confusion. Now I also believe that Ron Paul is as honest as white paint, and that he has told us plainly his actual thoughts on this. But this just means that he is honestly schizophrenic on this topic. That doesn’t make him lonely, it just makes him wrong. The secularist experiment is a fraud, and is lying around on the floor in a shambolic ruin.

In a breakfast discussion this morning, a friend astutely observed that this is why we probably ought to back away from our talk of constitutional rights. The Constitution was assigned to protect them; the Constitution was not given to us so that it might assign them. The Constitution was made for the rights, not the rights for the Constitution. Let’s speak of God-given rights.

I really appreciated the clarity in Santorum’s remarks. I appreciated the lack of confusion. God honors it when He is confessed.

Expect Self-Interest to Emerge Full Blown

We Can Trust the Pollies to Get It Right

There will be a brief flurry of interest in the Referendum held on the 26th November, 2011 as the votes are counted and the results come in.  It would seem that the public favours keeping Mixed Member Proportional Representation and giving the politicians the opportunity to tweak it.

We think it timely to remind ourselves that our system of MMP reproduces the German system.  No system is perfect; the MMP system–with all its quirks and frustrations–has worked reasonably well.  Its faults are well known.  But now the MP’s will get to tweak it and make it better.  We now enter a potentially dangerous phase.

The early suggestion for “improvement” is to make the system more purely proportional.  This involves lowering, or even doing away with, the five precent threshold, which folk in the Commentariat gravely tell us, is unfair.  The Conservative Party, for example,  scored just over 2% of the vote in the recent election, but has no representation in Parliament.  This is deemed “unfair”.  Maybe.  But what is fair?

The original pure proportional representation system was first applied in Germany, during the notoriously unstable Weimar Republic.  Here (as is now being touted for New Zealand) representation in the Bundestag was based on national percentage of the vote–provided your percentage could qualify you to get at least one human being in a seat in the parliament.  Putting is simply, if applied in NZ, since the Conservative Party got around 2.7% of the vote, and assuming the Parliamentary chamber consisted of 100 members, that would mean that the CP would get 2 members (maybe rounded up to one more, representing the 0.7%). Each person would have only one vote, not two as we currently have.

Sounds delectably fair, right?

Pure proportional representation led–in the hapless Weimar Republic–to notoriously unstable government.  (It has never been tried anywhere else) There is no doubt that this contributed in part to the rise of the Nazi Party.  Amidst all the instability, confusion, inability to govern, and a dysfunctional parliament, the hard-lines of the Nazi Party gradually seemed more attractive.  Stability became more important than pure proportional representation when the price of the latter was the inability of the parliament to function. 

According to this academic paper

. . .  (pure) proportional representation encouraged the formation of new parties and splinter parties. This, as Joseph Goebbels argued, gave Nazi officials enormous freedoms when they were members of an ostensibly insignificant part on the right, something which proved to be particularly helpful in the establishment of the National Socialist movement  (Evans, 2004, p.451, quoting Goebbels, 1935, p.61).

What we have witnessed in the split within the Maori Party, and the rise of Mana, is the potential instability in proportional representation systems.  There are now two parties are now claiming to represent Maori.  But why not four, or ten, or a party for each tribe?  Under pure proportional representation this would be encouraged.  The current instability of MMP would be magnified many times over.  Trying to form a government, let alone govern in such circumstances, would be next to impossible.  Throw in a debt crisis or two and voila, the good old Kiwi bloke would long for someone to come forward who would “kick the bastards in the guts”. 

MMP is bad enough, with severe weaknesses.  We need to be vigilant that in the “tweaking” that will now go on, we do not let the inmates take over the asylum.

>Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

>Not Entirely Gone

Liturgy and Worship – Exhortation
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, July 02, 2011

As you know, tomorrow is the 4th of July. This is the day on which we as Americans commemorate our independence from the tyranny that was being driven by the Parliament of England, but which was allowed by the king—who was constitutionally bound to protect us from all such usurpations. Because he failed in this fundamental constitutional duty, we no longer owed him our constitutional allegiance.

Now that declaration of independence had particular political details tangled up with it, tied to that time and place. Now I trust that when you set off your fireworks tomorrow night, you will teach your children to shout, “Down with the House of Hanover!” At the same time, the House of Hanover is not the present threat.

Though the names of the villains change, and their seats of power and influence move around, and the circumstances vary, the problem of usurpation is a problem that confronts every generation.

>Doug Wilson’s Letter From America

>An Inept Farmer With a Dull Knife

Culture and Politics – Politics
Written by Douglas Wilson
Friday, May 27, 2011

The (US) Constitution was the work of a corporate body, and that corporate body had different men and various factions in it. The Constitution was ratified by 13 states (eventually), but only with the proviso that the Bill of Rights be attached to it. These states ratified with varying degrees of enthusiasum and/or nervousness. And so we cannot say, “The Constitution was . . .” without adding a clause indicating what it was to whom.

The Federalists wanted to ratify the Constitution the way it came out of the convention. The Anti-federalists didn’t want to. Under pressure from the Anti-federalists, who had a lot of good arguments, the Bill of Rights was added. This means that the Constitution, as it was adopted, was a moderate Anti-federalist document. The Tenth Amendment made it staunchly Anti-federalist. The moderation came in because there were Anti-federalists who believed that language like that found in the Tenth Amendment was explicit and clear enough not to get somehow ignored. The event has shown that this optimistic take was wrong.

Now, consider (libertarian)  Ron Paul. What he is after is limited government. The Constitution is a document which, as it stands, as it is written, also stands for limited government. But whether it is actually useful toward that end or not, it was intended as nothing more than an instrument toward the end. In other words, if we have the document, as we do, but also have a federal government that tells me when, where, why, and how I am permitted to buy my cough medicine, we have a standing hypocrisy.

>Sideshows

>The House of Windsor and Decks of Cards

Political theorists of the Reformation argued that there was nothing intrinsically evil about the regimen of kings. Unlike the radical Thomas Paine, who argued vociferously in his incendiary pamphlet The Rights of Man that monarchs had been responsible for just about every tyranny every conceived, the faithful knew better. The Reformers understood that the Church had subsisted under a variety of forms of civil government: autocracies, monarchies, tribalism, and imperial domains. They also believed that the Church’s form of government was to be republican–government by elders, approved by the people and ordained by God. This divine form of government was revealed in Holy Scripture.

The application of the ecclesiastical pattern of government to civil government was appropriate, but was not mandatory. What mattered was whether the civil government was firstly a government of law, and secondly whether the law reflected the law of God Himself. This was the thrust of Samuel Rutherford’s Lex Rex. http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=jtertullian&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=1240149158&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifrTake the matter of marriage. It mattered little whether marriage and family law was promulgated by a king or a council; what really mattered was whether marital law reflected the teachings of the Bible on the matter.

The marriage of Cate and William Wales has stirred up the debate over the monarchy again–and whether New Zealand should become a republic. We note that royalist sentiment is stronger here now than when Charles and Diana were defaming the House of Windsor. The same is reportedly true in Australia.

To us the issue is insignificant–a distraction, even. New Zealand is one of the few countries in the world with a unicameral parliamentary system. Laws can get promulgated relatively easily here. There are few formal divisions of power, and checks and balances. The most effective restraint we have upon tyrannical and arbitrary power is the smallness of the country. The machinations of political masters are easily exposed and their cloaks threadbare. Politicians in New Zealand are relatively naked. The monarchy is not an effective check and balance upon other branches or organs of government.

Even if it were, it would matter little. Both the UK and New Zealand long ago adopted Western Unbelief as the established religion. Secularism with its attendant humanism is dominant. Regardless of the form of government–republican or constitutional monarchy–the laws of our land conform relentlessly to this higher creed. The hearts of our rulers and the hearts of our people reject God and approbate Man. Whilst the law remains a minor potentate, it is subject to the regimen of Unbelievers writing the law to satiate their lusts and desires.

The constitutional forms of civil government at this point are a small matter.

>A Living Constitution

>Words That Matter

There is a right-royal brouhaha in the United States at the moment–at least amongst the liberal elites.  It has been provoked by the newly elected Republican majority in the Congress, which has determined it will begin by a formal reading of the Constitution to the House  (Most Democrats refused to attend.)  This is one of those debates that divide and so is of interest to any who think seriously about the legitimate role of civil government in a free society.

To be sure there are those in the United States who have made an idol of the US Constitution, wanting to endow it with infallibility and the status of a demigod, just as there are those who want to rip the thing up and consign it to the dustbin of history.  These represent the extreme fringes of the debate and thus need not concern us. 

The positions of the “mainstream” protagonists can be neatly summarised.  Firstly, there is the editorial writer of the New York Times who sneers at the waste of time and money, and empty symbolism of having the  Constitution read to the House. 

Those who had hoped to see a glimpse of the much-advertised Republican plan to revive the economy and put Americans back to work will have to wait at least until party leaders finish their Beltway insider ritual of self-glorification. Then, they may find time for governing.

The empty gestures are officially intended to set a new tone in Washington, to demonstrate — presumably to the Republicans’ Tea Party supporters — that things are about to be done very differently. But it is far from clear what message is being sent by, for instance, reading aloud the nation’s foundational document. Is this group of Republicans really trying to suggest that they care more deeply about the Constitution than anyone else and will follow it more closely?

Dear me.  Tut, tut.  But the substantial argument for the legitimacy and place of the Constitution is made obliquely in the next paragraph:

In any case, it is a presumptuous and self-righteous act, suggesting that they alone understand the true meaning of a text that the founders wisely left open to generations of reinterpretation. (Emphasis, ours)

In this view, the Constitution is a beginning, not an end. “Reinterpretation” implies changing the meaning thereof.  It needs to be reinterpreted with each succeeding generation, to keep it alive and relevant.  Beneath this lies an ossuary of suppressed premises.  Amongst these are:

1. It is illegitimate for previous generations to bind and control the present generation.
2. Continuity of meaning over time of a particular text (book, essay, letter) is impossible.
3. Relevance cannot be sustained and maintained intergenerationally.
4. Truth and meaning evolve and change over time.
5. To survive requires change and adaptation.
6. Life comes from the existential now.

This view of the Constitution is the “mainstream” progressive perspective.  It leads to legislators and the Executive ignoring the limits on civil government imposed by the Constitution, on the one hand, and activist judges who discover new, previously unheard of  “constitutional rights” in every bedroom and washroom in the country.  In a word, it has led to a relentless expansion of power by the civil government–which pretty much sums up the last two hundred years of Western history. 

The contrary position is succinctly put by US Supreme Court justice, Antonin Scalia in the following video.

This position, too, has many suppressed premises–the opposite of those listed above.  What is really interesting is that these are the same issues that have dogged Christ’s Kingdom for two thousand years.  Moreover, it is impossible to take a definitive position on this debate without grounding it biblically and theologically. 

Because the Christian Gospel believes in the all governing, all conditioning God, Who does not change, continuity through development and despite change is not only possible, it is inevitable.  Because Christ is King and Lord over all the nations of the earth, and has been for over two thousand years, all the contingencies, all the developments, all the change has already been anticipated, accommodated and sufficiently addressed in His Word.  This means that the Bible remains infallible and sufficient.  Whilst TV’s and the Internet had not been invented, and the United States did not yet exist whilst our Lord was upon earth, their eventual reification was already anticipated and has been sufficiently addressed in Holy Scripture.  (II Timothy 3: 16,17) Thus the Word of God remains perpetually authoritative and pervasively relevant  to each generation–but only because of the totalitarian governance of our Lord Jesus Christ over the entirety of human history, so that no contingency is brute or unplanned or unordained.  Every decision of the cast lot is of the Lord.  (Proverbs 16:33)

If a society believes this, then authoritative documents binding successive generations are not only possible, but essential.  For the Lord has commanded us to learn from our forbears what He has already taught them.  (I Corinthians 11:2; II Timothy 2:2).  It is inevitable that subordinate standards emerge and are accepted–standards that are subordinate to the Word of God, that derive their authority from it, but are neither themselves  inspired, nor infallible.  Whilst capable of modification and adjustment and development, their higher authority depends not upon continual adjustment, but upon the Word whence they are derived.

For a society to remain Christian, it must not only have such subordinate standards, but they must be entrenched and not subject to the popular or elitist will du jour.  This is what the very foundations of constitutional government are themselves built upon.  But without the “deeper Magic” of the Word of God, they will soon crumble into desuetude.  Which is what is happening now in the United States and, as we have already noted, across the entire Western world. 

But the prerogatives of Power do not disappear under this revolution: they get transferred by man from Christ to the State, and therein lies the seed and root of the divine judgement which will inevitably fall until we repent.  For our Lord is a jealous God and He will not give His glory to another–which is to say, to the creature. 

We agree with the progressive liberals.  All subordinate standards in a community must be living documents and living words.  The issue is whence the spirit and life come.  But for the liberal the quickening of all things, including foundational documents, comes from us, from humanity.  For the Christian, the quickening of all things comes from the One who lives and abides forever and to Whom has been granted all power and authority in the heavens and upon the earth.  

Patterico makes a historical and “common sense” argument for the Constitution as an authoritative subordinate standard.  But in our world, it strangely fails to compel.  Why?  Because the argument below is only compelling upon overt, explicit Christian foundations. 

These twin concepts, of original understanding and textualism, are not mere legal theories. They are the underpinning of the legitimacy of our government. The People of the various states did not surrender powers whose contours were to be decided by judges who substituted their own “evolving standards of decency” for the text. Nor did they surrender powers to be determined by the unexpressed will of any particular founder or group of founders. They surrendered powers — limited powers — according to a text, the meaning of which is fixed in the words of the document, and determined by the original understanding of those words. The only legitimate way that our Congress can exercise power is by adhering to that text.
It is an absolutely essential idea, therefore, for a Republican Congress that actually intends to exercise power in a legitimate fashion, to begin its session by reading the very text that delineates and circumscribes its legitimate authority.
The proof of the pudding is, of course, in what this Congress does — not in mere symbols. But symbols matter too — and this is a hell of a symbolic statement with which to open.
UPDATE: Ilya Somin says it well in an old post:

The idea that the law is ultimately embodied in the text enacted by the legislature rather than in the subjective “purposes” of the legislators strikes many people as just common sense.

Indeed. And since we are a nation founded on the rule of law, we are a nation governed by texts, not subjective purposes or intent. This, again, is why reading the text is so important — and why reading the text of our most important document is a crucial reminder of what it says — and what (despite liberals’ fondest hopes) it doesn’t say.

Patterico is right and the argument is both compelling and sound, but only if we give up the suppressed premises of progressive liberalism and reject the false religion upon which they are based.  Unless we have Christ enthroned in our lives and communities, we are all progressive liberals at heart.  “Turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel? (Ezekiel 33:11)

>PM Midterm Report Card, Part III

>Flawed Constitutional Instincts

In this report card on the current Prime Minister of New Zealand, John Key we employ the word “instincts” frequently. Instincts can be salutary where they function as early and leading indicators. But instincts, whilst necessary, are never sufficient. They must be buttressed with principled thought. It is here that one of John Key’s biggest flaws becomes apparent. He often betrays a want of fundamental principles to inform clear thinking to support his instincts. The upshot is that he ends up as a milk-toast, weak kneed, unprincipled leader who consistently kow tows to the left or the social progressives (aka, the velvet revolutionaries).

This leads people to sense that there is a shallowness to the current Prime Minister. Some have averred that he trades too much on being a “nice guy”. Others have complained that he is a weak and plastic man. Whilst they concede he may well be a nice guy, he is clearly not a leader.

So, his constitutional instincts appear sound. He clearly does not regard government as his own personal fiefdom. He has reversed the previous government’s deliberate politicising of the public service–a terrible travesty of the constitution. He has stopped dead in its tracks the revolutionary attempt by the Labour Government to override the neutrality and impartiality of the electoral process, which resulted in never-before-seen curtailments of freedom of political speech. It would be hard to imagine John Key stripping away the Privy Council as the highest court in the land, without careful consideration and a broad political consensus. One has not seen deliberate attempts to stack the judiciary with party activists and flunkies that occurred under Justice Minister, Margaret Wilson. The recovery of a neutral Speaker’s Chair in Parliament has been immensely gratifying–and to the good of all.

All these can be cited as evidence of Key’s sound constitutional instincts–and this soundness is neither inconsequential nor unimportant. We are very thankful for it. So, a bouquet is arguable.

But Key’s instincts do not appear to be buttressed by a grasp of principle. Two examples illustrate what we mean. The first is his willingness to play a condign role in the most radical change in the constitution and the rule of law in this country. We refer, of course, to the claim of co-sovereignty by Maori over the country. This is a radical constitutional claim–and by now the soft-revolution is virtually “all over, Rover”.

Key initially took a stance that appeared quite principled. He committed himself and his party to the abolition of Maori seats. That was a sound instinct. But underneath it lay an iceberg of broader constitutional issues to which he appears completely oblivious, or, worse, has decided are relatively unimportant in the bigger scheme of things.

Much has been made about the Treaty of Waitangi. Up until about thirty years ago it was universally held that the Treaty was a “vassal treaty” in which Maori ceded sovereignty to the Crown. Now “vassal treaties” or covenants have been around since the beginning of time. But Maori have gradually worked up an argument to re-write history and the exegesis of the Treaty. We believe they have done so dishonestly, using this argument as a pretext for yet more state sanctioned redistribution of others property to Maori.

Maori have argued essentially two things about the Treaty. First, because it was entered into voluntarily and not by subjugation, it can also be exited voluntarily. Like a modern, secular “marriage”, whilst the parties freely enter into the arrangement, it can be broken and revoked at by one of the parties at will. Thus, they have argued, Waitangi was not a vassal treaty, and therefore sovereignty by Maori to the Crown was not conceded. It was a Treaty between equals.

Secondly, and following on from this, Maori have argued that they are “Treaty partners” and therefore share co-sovereignty over the nation with the Crown. Just as Maori ceded sovereignty to the Crown when they signed the Treaty, the Crown equally ceded its sovereignty to Maori.

It goes without saying that this is a completely radical and revolutionary conception. It is historicism on a grand scale. But, amazingly–and to our everlasting shame as a nation–it has been widely accepted by default. It remains unchallenged and uncontested. It is a radical reshaping of our Constitution. John Key has failed to grasp this.

So, he has approached the whole Maori political movement (as expressed via the organ of the Maori Party), as a negotiation, a deal to be had. Now a deal to be had in politics is one thing. But when it involves a fundamental change in our constitutional fabric, it is something else entirely.

John Key has failed the country badly here. He has been in an ideal position–he has had an opportunity that will possibly never happen again. Upon going into coalition with the Maori Party, he has had the opportunity to concede the abolition of the Maori parliamentary seats for the time being, whilst reiterating constantly the wider constitutional issues and that are at stake. This he has failed to do. The spurious claims of co-sovereignty, withdrawal from the ceding to the Crown, and of “Treaty partner” have to be named and shamed. Key has defalcated on these responsibilities. Once the Maori Party was in the tent he was in a perfect position, privately and publicly, to press the fundamental constitutional issues at stake, and reject the revolutionary historical revisionism which Maori and progressives have been successfully foisting to date upon the country. On all these matters, Key has gone cacophonously silent. One is left wondering whether he really understands the issues at all.

A second example of egregious constitutional failure has been Key’s position over the anti-smacking law. He has stubbornly, in the face of overwhelming public opposition, clung to his maxim that he will not support a law amendment unless damage is done to “ordinary” New Zealand families. He has “assured” the country that despite what the Crimes Act now says, he will ensure that the Police will exercise discretion and not apply the law, at least not in the way it is written. This is a totally untenable position from a principled constitutional perspective. It tacitly and implicitly and in principle undermines the rule of law itself.

And why has he done this? We are told that Tariana Turia made a personal appeal to him not to amend the law because of the “message it would send” to Maori about child abuse. No doubt there was other pressure bought to bear upon Key from inside the Beltway as well. But if Key has been willing to set constitutional principles aside for the sake of maintaining “good guy” status with his coalition partners, he has failed in his duty as Prime Minister. There is no other conclusion that can be drawn.

On the matter of fidelity to the constitutional framework of New Zealand’s Westminster democracy, we appreciate Key’s instincts, but believe him to be way out of his depth. He is perpetuating recent damage, and has been inflicting his own, new harms.