Letter From America (Explaining Why Liberals are Pathological Hypocrits)

A Year of Liberal Double Standards

What seems like staggering hypocrisy is actually remarkably consistent from liberals’ perspective.

By Jonah Goldberg

National Review Online

December 31, 2014

Many conservatives finished the year angry about the same thing they were angry about at the beginning of the year: liberal double standards.

As I write this, GOP House whip Steve Scalise is in hot water over reports that he spoke to a group of racist poltroons in Louisiana twelve years ago. Whether it was an honest mistake, as Scalise plausibly claims, or a sign of something more nefarious, as his detractors hope, remains to be seen.

But one common response on social media is instructive. Countless conservatives want to know: Why the double standard? Barack Obama was friends with a domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers. His spiritual mentor was a vitriolic racist, Jeremiah Wright. One of his administration’s closest advisers and allies is Al Sharpton, a man who has inspired enough racial violence to make a grand dragon’s white sheets turn green with envy.

Meanwhile, the Democratic party venerated the late senator Robert Byrd, a former Klansmen himself. He was one of 19 senators (all Democrats) to sign the Southern Manifesto opposing integration. One of his co-signers was William Fulbright, Bill Clinton’s mentor.

I don’t know who first said, “Behind every apparent double standard lies an unconfessed single standard” (and as far as I can tell, neither does the Internet), but whoever did was onto something.

When Republicans are in power, “dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” When Democrats are in power, dissent is the racist fuming of “angry white men.”

Peaceful, law-abiding tea-party groups who cleaned up after their protests — and got legal permits for them — were signs of nascent fascism lurking in the American soul. Violent, anarchic, and illegal protests by Occupy Wall Street a few years ago or, more recently, in Ferguson, Mo., were proof that a new idealistic generation was renewing its commitment to idealism.  When rich conservatives give money to Republicans, it is a sign that the whole system has been corrupted by fat cats. When it is revealed that liberal billionaires and left-wing super PACs outspent conservative groups in 2014: crickets.  When Republicans invoke God or religious faith as an inspiration for their political views, it’s threatening and creepy. When Democrats do it, it’s a sign they believe in social justice.

One can do this all day long. But while examples are easy, explanations are hard.

I don’t know who first said, “Behind every apparent double standard lies an unconfessed single standard” (and as far as I can tell, neither does the Internet), but whoever did was onto something.  What looks like inexplicably staggering hypocrisy from the conservative perspective is actually remarkably consistent from the liberal perspective.

Any lapse, error, or transgression by conservatives is evidence of their real nature, while similar lapses, errors, and transgressions by liberals are trivial when balanced against the fact that their hearts are in the right place.

Well, “perspective” is probably the wrong word because it implies a conscious, deliberate, philosophical point of view. What is really at work is better understood as bias, even bigotry.

If you work from the dogmatic assumption that liberalism is morally infallible and that liberals are, by definition, pitted against sinister and — more importantly — powerful forces, then it’s easy to explain away what seem like double standards. Any lapse, error, or transgression by conservatives is evidence of their real nature, while similar lapses, errors, and transgressions by liberals are trivial when balanced against the fact that their hearts are in the right place.

Despite controlling the commanding heights of the culture — journalism, Hollywood, the arts, academia, and vast swaths of the corporate America they denounce — liberals have convinced themselves they are pitted against deeply entrenched powerful forces and that being a liberal is somehow brave. Obama, the twice-elected president of the United States, to this day speaks as if he’s some kind of underdog.

Frank Rich, the former New York Times columnist and theater critic, recently interviewed Chris Rock for New York magazine. He wanted to know why right-leaning comedian Dennis Miller isn’t as funny (at least according to Rich) as Jon Stewart of The Daily Show. He asked Rock, “Do you think that identifying with those in power is an impediment to laughter?”

It was a hilarious and revealing moment. Stewart — who recently had to turn down a pleading request from NBC to take over Meet the Press — has long identified with liberals in power. Moreover, he’s easily one of America’s most powerful liberals, routinely creating and enforcing liberal conventional wisdom (much as Rich had done from his perch at the Times). Miller, meanwhile, has nowhere near the same cultural clout precisely because he doesn’t affirm the single standard at the heart of liberalism: “We’re the good guys.”

— Jonah Goldberg is a senior editor of National Review and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. You can write to him by e-mail at goldbergcolumn@gmail.com or via Twitter @JonahNRO. © 2014 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

 

Rules for the Plebs

Living Well Above the Herd

There are few things more likely to stir up cynicism and disgust than “leaders” who moralistically lecture everyone about their duties and responsibilities, whilst they themselves live irresponsibly (by their own declared rules).  Hypocrisy always has a nasty smell. 

We are all familiar with “celebrities” who hector the world about poverty, global warming, and a host of other fashionable causes, only to live ostentatious lifestyles which loudly proclaim they believe themselves to be above their particular set of moralistic rules for the rest of humanity.  We are familiar with the carbon footprint of one Al Gore–dedicated warrior against global warming–whose extravagant lifestyle and business dealings put the lie to his pontificating.  Gore is a “do as I say, not as I do” kind of chap. 

The Greens in general are notorious for this kind of dissembling.  Greenpeace has hit the news recently over just such hypocrisy.

Greenpeace’s carbon footprint in mouth

By Emily Gosden

NZ Herald

One of Greenpeace’s most senior executives commutes 400km each way to work by plane, the environmental group has admitted.

Pascal Husting, the programme director at Greenpeace International, said he began “commuting between Luxembourg and Amsterdam” when he took the job in 2012 and made the round trip about twice a month.
The flights, costing 250 ($390) return, are paid by Greenpeace, even though it campaigns to cut air travel, arguing the growth in flying “is ruining our chances of stopping dangerous climate change”.

One volunteer described the arrangement as “almost unbelievable”. Another was going to cancel their donation after a series of disclosures about financial mismanagement in documents leaked to the Guardian newspaper.  Greenpeace was forced to apologise for a “serious error of judgment” last week, after it emerged it had lost 3.75 million of public donations when a member of staff tried unauthorised currency dealing. KLM airline said each round trip Husting made would generate 142kg of carbon dioxide emissions – a carbon footprint equivalent over two years to consuming 17 barrels of oil, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. . . .

Richard Lancaster, who said he’d been involved with Greenpeace since the 1980s, responded: “I volunteer with Greenpeace but work in the commercial world and if I took a job in another country I’d expect to move to where the job is … I find Pascal’s travel arrangements almost unbelievable.” Another supporter wrote: “So disappointed. Hardly had 2 pennies to rub together but have supported GP for 35+ years. Cancelling [direct debit].”

Greenpeace has campaigned to curb air travel and end “needless” domestic flights. In a briefing on aviation the group said: “In terms of damage to the climate, flying is 10 times worse than taking the train.”

Here is another example, closer to home.  Auckland City Council has been hectoring everyone for years about the need for public transport and for the public to support it, both with ever-increasing city taxes, and with their patronage.  But now it has emerged the Council is funding a private shuttle service for its staff around town because the public transport options (buses, trains) are too slow.  Let everyone else travel the slow route.  We are far too important to be reduced to travelling on buses and trains.  Yet another case of “do as I say, not as I do”.  

First it was the mayor catching the train while being followed by his ratepayer-funded chauffeur-driven car.  Now, Len Brown’s staff have been riding in special shuttles zipping around Auckland – apparently because it’s faster than the public transport they provide to ratepayers.  Council-controlled Auckland Transport has started a shuttle bus service for its staff, surprising public transport watchers.

The Herald has discovered a second shuttle at Auckland Council and plans for a third in the works.  With Auckland Transport costing its shuttle at $122,000 for a six-month trial, it could set the bill for moving council staff around Auckland close to $700,000 a year.

What should a good citizen do?  Our advice is to Ignore the pontificating moralisers who are always trying to tell others how they should live their lives.  Step out and enjoy the free air.  Eschew hypocrisy.  Christians especially should heed such advice.  We are to be merry warriors.  We are to laugh at the foibles and hypocrisies of the world.  We are to focus, first on self-government, then on our families, and our church congregations and fellowships, then upon being a good servant to our employers, and then on our neighbours–seeking to do good to all men, but especially to those of the household of faith.  We would do well to ignore the fashionable, ephemeral moralities of the world and laugh loudly at its attempts to make us feel guilty.  In reality, “they”–the moralisers–don’t believe their own press.  More fool we if we believe it, or allow ourselves to be manipulated into complying. 

Letter From America (About Drifting)

The Drift toward Despotism

Too many of our rulers and their enforcers reflexively see the citizenry as a threat.

By Mark Steyn

 

November 8, 2013 4:45 PM

National Review Online

 

At a time when over 4 million people have had their health insurance canceled, it’s good to know that some Americans can still access prompt medical treatment, even if they don’t want it. David Eckert was pulled over by police in Deming, N.M., for failing to come to a complete halt at a stop sign in the Walmart parking lot. He was asked to step out of the vehicle, and waited on the sidewalk. Officers decided that they didn’t like the tight clench of his buttocks, a subject on which New Mexico’s constabulary is apparently expert, and determined that it was because he had illegal drugs secreted therein.

So they arrested him, and took him to Gila Regional Medical Center in neighboring Hidalgo County, where Mr. Eckert was forced to undergo two abdominal X-rays, two rectal probes, three enemas, and defecate thrice in front of medical staff and representatives of two law-enforcement agencies, before being sedated and subjected to a colonoscopy — all procedures performed against his will and without a valid warrant.

Alas, Mr. Eckert’s body proved to be a drug-free zone, and so, after twelve hours of detention, he was released.
If you’re wondering where his lawyer was during all this, no attorney was present, as police had not charged Mr. Eckert with anything, so they’re apparently free to frolic and gambol up his rectum to their hearts’ content. Deming police chief Brandon Gigante says his officers did everything “by the book.” That’s the problem, in New Mexico and beyond: “the book.”

Getting into the spirit of things, Gila Regional Medical Center subsequently sent Mr. Eckert a bill for $6,000. It appears he had one of what the president calls those “bad apple” plans that doesn’t cover anal rape. Doubtless, under the new regime, Obamacare navigators will be happy to take a trip up your northwest passage free of charge. That’s what it is, by the way: anal rape. The euphemisms with which the state dignifies the process — “cavity search” — are distinctions that exist only in the mind of the perpetrator, not the fellow on the receiving end. Fleet Street’s Daily Mail reports that this is at least the second anal fishing expedition mounted by local authorities. Timothy Young underwent a similar experience after being fingered by the same police dog, Leo, who may not be very good at sniffing drugs but certainly has an eye for a pert bottom. At the time of Mr. Young’s arrest, Leo’s police license had reportedly expired a year-and-a-half earlier, but why get hung up on technicalities?

Messrs. Eckert and Young may yet win their cases. But one notes that the Supreme Court has dramatically circumscribed Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure when it occurs at America’s border, and post-9/11 the “border” has been redefined to mean anywhere within 100 miles of the actual frontier. Many European countries are not 100 miles wide in their entirety. A hundred-mile buffer zone from Belgium’s northern border, for example, would be well south of the southern border and deep into France. But Deming falls within the 100-mile Fourth Amendment–free zone, and so, I note, between the seacoast and the Quebec border, does the whole of my own state of New Hampshire. It would be prudent perhaps for Granite Staters to affect a loose-buttocked saunter when strolling around the White Mountains.

Of course, even with millions of canceled health-care policies freeing up medical staff, it is unlikely that the authorities could ever give the full Deming PD treatment to the bulk of the populace. Perhaps that’s why Americans do not seem to get terribly exercised by these cases. There are over 300 million people, and the chances of Leo taking a fancy to one’s own posterior are relatively remote. Yet tyranny is always capricious, and the willingness of police and compliant doctors and nurses to go along with it ought to disturb a supposedly free people, no matter how comparatively rare it may seem.

Meanwhile, an unarmed woman was gunned down on the streets of Washington for no apparent crime other than driving too near Barackingham Palace and thereby posing a threat to national security. As disturbing as Miriam Carey’s bullet-riddled body and vehicle were, the public indifference to it is even worse. Ms. Carey does not appear to be guilty of any act other than a panic attack when the heavy-handed and heavier-armed palace guard began yelling at her. Much of what was reported in the hours after her death seems dubious: we are told Ms. Carey was “mentally ill,” although she had no medications in her vehicle and those at her home back in Connecticut are sufficiently routine as to put millions of other Americans in the category of legitimate target. We are assured that she suffered from post-partum depression, as if the inability to distinguish between a depressed mom and a suicide bomber testifies to the officers’ professionalism. Under D.C. police rules, cops are not permitted to fire on a moving vehicle, because of the risk to pedestrians and other drivers.

But the Secret Service and the Capitol Police enjoy no such restraints, so the car doors are full of bullet holes. The final moments of the encounter remain a mystery, but police were supposedly able to extract Ms. Carey’s baby from the back of a two-door vehicle before dispatching the defenseless mother to meet her maker.

Did I mention she was African American? When a black teen dies in a late-night one-on-one encounter with a fellow citizen on the streets of Sanford, Fla., it’s the biggest thing since Selma. But when a defenseless black woman is gunned down by a posse of robocops in broad daylight on the streets of the capital, the Reverend Jackson and the Reverend Sharpton and all the other bouffed and pampered grievance-mongers are apparently cool with it.

This isn’t very difficult. When you need large numbers of supposedly highly trained elite officers to kill an unarmed woman with a baby, you’re doing it wrong. In perhaps the most repugnant reaction to Ms. Carey’s death, the United States Congress expressed their “gratitude” to the officers who killed her and gave them a standing ovation. Back in the Eighties, the Queen woke up to find a confused young man at the end of her bed. She talked to him calmly until help arrived and he was led away.

A few years later, Her Majesty’s Canadian prime minister, Jean Chrétien, was confronted by an aggrieved protester. As is his wont, he dealt with it somewhat more forcefully than his sovereign, throttling the guy, forcing him to the ground, and breaking his tooth, until the Mounties arrived to rescue the assailant from the prime minister. But, had the London and Ottawa intruders been gunned down by SWAT teams, I cannot imagine for a moment either the British or Canadian parliament rising to applaud such an outcome. This was a repulsive act by Congress.

Miriam Carey is already forgotten, and the lawyer her family hired has now, conveniently, been jailed for a bad debt. I am not one for cheap historical analogies: My mother spent four of her childhood years under Nazi occupation, and it is insulting to her and millions of others who know the real thing to bandy overheated comparisons. But there is a despotic trend in American government. Too many of our rulers and their enforcers reflexively see the citizenry primarily as a threat. Which is why the tautness of one’s buns is now probable cause, and why in Congress the so-called people’s representatives’ first instinct is to stand and cheer the death of a defenseless woman.

— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. © 2013 Mark Steyn
 

Letter From America (About Moral Schizophrenia)

Postmodern Prudes 

In the age of relativism, popular morality hasn’t so much disappeared as become schizophrenic.

By Victor Davis Hanson
April 18, 2013
National Review Online

More than 500 people were murdered in Chicago last year. Yet Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel still found time to berate the fast-food franchise Chick-fil-A for not sharing “Chicago values” — apparently, because its founder does not approve of gay marriage.

Two states have legalized marijuana, with more to come. Yet social taboos against tobacco smoking make it nearly impossible to light up a cigarette in public places. Marijuana, like alcohol, causes far greater short-term impairment than does nicotine. But legal cigarette smoking is now seen as a corporate-sponsored, uncool, and dirty habit that leads to long-term health costs for society at large — in a way homegrown, hip, and mostly illegal pot smoking apparently does not.

Graphic language, nudity, and sex are now commonplace in movies and on cable television. At the same time, there is now almost no tolerance for casual and slangy banter in the media or the workplace. A boss who calls an employee “honey” might face accusations of fostering a hostile work environment, yet a television producer whose program shows an 18-year-old having sex does not. Many colleges offer courses on lurid themes from masturbation to prostitution, even as campus sexual-harassment suits over hurtful language are at an all-time high.

A federal judge in New York recently ruled that the so-called morning-after birth-control pill must be made available to all “women” regardless of age or parental consent, and without a prescription. The judge determined that it was unfair for those under 16 to be denied access to such emergency contraceptives. But if vast numbers of girls younger than 16 need after-sex options to prevent unwanted pregnancies, why isn’t there a flood of statutory-rape charges being lodged against older teenagers for having consensual relations with younger girls?

Our schizophrenic morality also affects the military. When America was a far more traditional society, few seemed to care that General Dwight Eisenhower carried on an unusual relationship at the front in Normandy with his young female chauffeur, Kay Summersby. As the Third Army chased the Germans across France, General George S. Patton was not discreet about his female liaisons. Contrast that live-and-let-live attitude of a supposedly uptight society with our own hip culture’s tabloid interest in General David Petraeus’s career-ending affair with Paula Broadwell, or in the private e-mails of General John Allen.

What explains these contradictions in our wide-open but prudish society? Decades after the rise of feminism, popular culture still seems confused by it. If women should be able to approach sexuality like men, does it follow that commentary about sex should follow the same gender-neutral rules? Yet wearing provocative or inappropriate clothing is often considered less offensive than remarking upon it. Calling a near-nude Madonna onstage a “hussy” or “tart” would be considered crude in a way that her mock crucifixion and simulated sex acts are not.

Criminal sexual activity is sometimes not as professionally injurious as politically incorrect thoughts about sex and gender. Former New York governor Eliot Spitzer — found to have hired prostitutes on a number of occasions during his time in office — was given a CNN news show despite the scandal. But when former Miss California Carrie Prejean was asked in the Miss USA pageant whether she endorsed gay marriage, she said no — and thereby earned nearly as much popular condemnation for her candid defense of traditional marriage as Spitzer had for his purchased affairs.

Critics were outraged that talk-show host Rush Limbaugh grossly insulted birth-control activist Sandra Fluke. Amid the attention, Fluke was canonized for her position that federal health-care plans should pay for the contraceptive costs of all women. Yet in comparison to Fluke’s well-publicized victimhood, there has been a veritable news blackout for the trial of the macabre Dr. Kermit Gosnell, charged with killing and mutilating in gruesome fashion seven babies during a long career of conducting sometimes illegal late-term abortions. Had Gosnell’s aborted victims been canines instead of humans — compare the minimal coverage of the Gosnell trial with the widespread media condemnation of dog-killing quarterback Michael Vick — perhaps the doctor’s mayhem likewise would have been front-page news outside of Philadelphia.

Modern society also resorts to empty, symbolic moral action when it cannot deal with real problems. So-called assault weapons account for less than 1 percent of gun deaths in America. But the country whips itself into a frenzy to ban them, apparently to prove that at least it can do something, instead of wading into polarized racial and class controversies by going after illegal urban handguns, the real source of the nation’s high gun-related body count.

Not since the late-19th-century juxtaposition of the Wild West with the Victorian East has popular morality been so unbridled and yet so uptight. In short, we have become a nation of promiscuous prudes.

— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. His The Savior Generals will appear in the spring from Bloomsbury Books. © 2013 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Faux Outrage

When the Amoral Profess Morality

The amoral brigade regularly festoons itself with faux outrage.  We have in mind occasions when Christians are exposed as having been engaged in sinful practices, sometimes extremely bad ones. 

The Christian position on such travesties is sound, sure, and consistent.  The Christian Gospel teaches that all men, all men, are totally depraved–by which we mean that the thoughts and intents of the heart are evil.  So it is not unexpected that from time to time professing Christians fall into sin once again.

The amoral brigade shrieks, “Hypocrisy!”.    No–hypocrisy would be if the lapsed believer and the Christian Church attempted to justify, explain away, excuse, or in any other way deny the evil and sinfulness of the person’s actions.  After all, we believe that Peter–an apostle, no less–publicly denied the Lord thrice, despite the fact that he had heard the solemn utterance of our Lord that the one who denied the Christ before men would be denied by that same Christ before His heavenly Father.
 

It is salutary that the disciples did not gather round shouting, “Hypocrit”.  Nor did our risen Lord.  Rather, he restored him to Himself and to the office of an apostle, forgiving his sin.  He had already borne the full penalty for the sin of Peter’s denial upon the Cross. 

We come from a long line of public sinners–who have sinned in office and in private life: Abraham’s lies over his wife Sarah, Noah’s drunkenness, Moses’s anger, David’s adultery and murder, Eli’s indulgence of his wicked sons–we could go on for a long time.  But most of these people were dealt with by God, humbled, granted the grace of repentance, and were restored.  This is not hypocrisy.  It is human reality.  It is the Gospel in action. 

The real hypocrisy is the faux outrage of the amoral.  These folk celebrate homosexuality, licentiousness, greed, covetousness, lying, fraud, drunkenness, theft, gossip, slander, adultery, blasphemy, cursing and pretty much every other kind of human evil.  For them morality is just a matter of personal preference.  If you should happen to change your preferences, so be it.  What’s sauce for the goose may well be poison for the gander–and that’s just fine.  It’s all an expression of genes and evolutionary conditioning. 

What we find contradictory and truly hypocritical is that these folk express moral indignation at the lapsed Christian.  If they truly believed what they daily profess they would welcome and celebrate the lapsed.  “You have become like one of us,” they would say.  Consequently, their outrage is actually false.  But it does betray their stated beliefs as untrue to their own hearts.  They demonstrate they have the law of God written on their hearts, as indeed the Scripture declares.  They demonstrate their own guilt by continuing to live as amoral persons, despite knowing the truth and the law and their own depravity.

By their faux outrage, the amoral condemn themselves.  They heap up more guilt upon their heads.  Even as they stand condemning the lapsed Christian, they heap up guilt upon their own heads, because they betray the truth: they know that such things are wrong.  They know that their amorality is perverse.  They know their own guilt before a holy God.    

True Commitments

Gore’s Green Commitments

The hypocrisy of Al “do-as-I say,-not-as-I-do” Gore has been well documented.  The man whose personal global carbon footprint is bigger than Texas long ago lost all credibility–except amongst the credulous.  Amongst such, Al still has a devoted band of acolytes and callow tyros fighting the good fight for the salvation of mankind. 

Recently Al sold one of his unsuccessful businesses–a TV station.  This failed commercially not because of a lack of ardour and passion amongst those involved, but because there were no government subsidies on offer to make it pay.  Al deserves full blame for this lack of commercial success.  He broke his own rule of successful investing, which is: never invest in anything that does not have a taxpayer subsidy.
 

Al sold his failing TV channel to Al Jazeera–which is OK in itself since Al is a globalist of globalists–but the rub is that Al Jazeera has been grown out of petro-dollars.  Al sold out to the enemy–or that’s what his stunned band of acolytes believe. 

The New York Post documents the announcement of the sale to Al’s TV station staff:

Yesterday morning, the still shell shocked staff at Current TV was called to an all hands staff meeting at its San Francisco headquarters, which was teleconferenced to their offices in LA and NYC, to meet their new bosses.  That would be two of Al Jazeera’s top guys: Ehab Al Shihabi, executive director of international operations, and Muftah AlSuwaidan, general manager of the London bureau.  Ominously missing was the creator of Current, the self proclaimed inventor of the Internet and savior of clean energy, Al Gore, although his partner, Joel Hyatt, stood proudly with the Al Jazeera honchos.

“Of course Al didn’t show up,” said one high placed Current staffer. “He has no credibility. He’s supposed to be the face of clean energy and just sold [the channel] to very big oil, the emir of Qatar! Current never even took big oil advertising—and Al Gore, that bulls***ter sells to the emir?”

So the poor staff had been working frantically to raise ad revenue, but they had been tethered because they had not been allowed to accept dirty ad money from big oil.  But now their boss, the Green Crusader has stabbed them in the back by accepting cash from those rich Arabs whose sole source of moola is dirty oil money.
 
So much for the Green Crusader.  This is the problem when the acolytes genuinely believe, whilst their leader is merely posing (for commercial gain). The marriage was always going to end in tears.

How do they feel about Gore the savior of green energy now?  The displeasure with Gore among the staff was thick enough to cut with a scimitar.  “We all know now that Al Gore is nothing but a bulls***ter,” said the staffer bluntly.  We do stories on the tax code, and he sells the network before the tax code kicked in?

“Al was always lecturing us about green. He kept his word about green all right—as in cold, hard cash!”

And there is the money quote, if you would excuse the pun.  The only green Al is committed to is cold hard green cash, his–not yours.  

Raggle Taggle Leaders

Deafening Silence

We expect a chorus of indignation and outrage swelling to a climactic crescendo in Parliament this week.  Something truly terrible has happened in the land–the kind of thing so bad that mothers clutch their children to their breasts in mortal dread. 

A Maori tribe has sold–yes sold!–land given to it as part of a treaty settlement.  Te Uri o Hau was awarded some land near Mangawhai just north of Auckland which consisted of 616 hectares of forest in prime coastal land.  They are selling off a third (230 hectares).  Who is going to stand up to protest? 

Well, we expect that the Mana Party, the Green Party, and probably the Maori party are going to express moral outrage at the betrayal of Maori being disenfranchised from their land with which they have a deep spiritual connection, and in communion with which Maori hear the ancient spirits talking to them.
  Now it will be gone for good.  With whom will the mokopuna–and generations yet to come–commune now?  Their birthright is being stripped from them.  They will be alienated from their own Maoritanga.  We expect the Maori Council will rush the now well-beaten path to court seeking an injunction to stop the sale.     

But wait.  It’s worse.  Is that possible?  Alas, it is.  The traitorous hapu, Te Uri o Hau have sold the land to foreigners.  To outsiders.  Expect Winston Peters, the champion of national economic autarky, to arise to his feet in Parliament and thunder against precious coastal land being alienated from the people of New Zealand and sold to foreigners.  The grossly incompetent Overseas Investment Office approved the sale.  The government is betraying us all. 

Peters will be followed hard on heels by David Shearer, leader of the Labour Party decrying not just the destruction of prime forest in order to clear the land for sale–a traitorous economic act to be sure–but to see the Chinese in control of coastal land just north of Auckland where Aucklanders love to slurp coffee and wine in boutique sea side cafes of a weekend is just too much for the ordinary Kiwi bloke to stomach.  It’s an insult to our national mana and confirms that the Government is indeed betraying us all.

One of his colleagues will whisper in Shearer’s ear that his press secretary had it wrong.  The land had not been sold to the Chinese.  It has been sold to an American.  Ah, well.  That’s different.  But no.  Wait.  Not just any American–a multi-billionaire.  An exploiter of the downtrodden masses.  This odious man is taking precious land from poor, animist, taniwha loving Maori and using it for his own exploitative venal purposes.  Marx and Lenin and Mickey Savage would be turning in their graves.

Before Shearer has even had a chance to wipe the egg off his face and sit down, Red Russel, co-leader of the Greens will join the fray.  Russel cites reliable sources that have told him the purchaser of the land, Mr Kayne an odious man from California who runs a firm called Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors (and doesn’t that name say it all, Mr Speaker) is not just a capitalist exploiter, he is a climate desecrater.  I have been told, Mr Speaker he insisted that the land be cleared of trees before he expropriated it from New Zealanders.  The global warming meter has gone off the scale.  The wicked Mr Kayne is willingly complicit in the destruction of the planet.  And he is coming to live here!  In New Zealand.  What will that do, Mr Speaker to our Clean Green brand?  Huh?  Have you thought of that Mr Speaker?  Oh, sorry.  Of course you have not.  You cannot think. I rest my case.  Anyone who disagrees with me or doesn’t understand my soaring logic cannot think by definition.  I am my own self-autheticator of my own facts.  No-one else counts.

Will we hear the chorus?  No.  Not at all.  We will be deafened by silence.  But if Mr Kayne had in fact been the CEO of KungShu Capital Advisers, out of Beijing we would have required ear plugs to get some rest.  Therein lies exposed the jingoistic hypocrisy of the raggle taggle collage of opposition parties masquerading as national leaders in our Parliament.  Their hypocritical silence serves as loud and clear condemnation. 

Meanwhile, let’s give genuine credit where it is due.  Firstly, a big thumbs up to Te Uri o Hau which sold the land in the first place.  With an eye to prospering their own, they plan to use the proceeds to invest further into dairying, where, they argue they have more competitive strengths.  Moreover, they believe, according to the NZ Herald, that under Mr Kayne’s ownership the local community would benefit substantially from the sale. 

Te Uri o Hau said the development . . .  would add about $5.9 million to the local economy and the complex would create about 30 jobs.

What development?  What complex?  Hah.  An international golf course (a la Cape Kidnappers and Kauri Cliffs).  Now you are talking!  Top marks Te Uri o Hau.  More power to you.  Thanks, boys.  Job well done.

Letter From America (About Free Speech)

 Western Hypocrisy Mocked by Islamists

Every so often secular revolutionaries break out from the chains and constraints of the Commentariat.  They see some things that bear a remarkable resemblance to hypocrisy in the received wisdom of Western secularism.  More often than not the remedies proposed to the hypocrisy are way off the reservation, but the fundamental point being made remains sound. 

Here is William Saletan writing in Slate:

Hate-Speech Hypocrites

How can we ban hate speech against Jews while defending mockery of Muslims?

By William Saletan| 

Posted Friday, Sept. 28, 2012

Photograph by Hasham Ahmed/AFP/Getty Images. Pakistani Shiite Muslims shout slogans beside a burning Israeli flag during a rally against Israel and the United States to mark the Al-Quds (Jerusalem) day on the last Friday of the holiest month of Ramadan in Peshawar in August

Jews have too much influence over U.S. foreign policy. Gay men are too promiscuous. Muslims commit too much terrorism. Blacks commit too much crime. 

Each of those claims is poorly stated. Each, in its clumsy way, addresses a real problem or concern. And each violates laws against hate speech. In much of what we call the free world, for writing that paragraph, I could be jailed.

Libertarians, cultural conservatives, and racists have complained about these laws for years. But now the problem has turned global. Islamic governments, angered by an anti-Muslim video that provoked protests and riots in their countries, are demanding to know why insulting the Prophet Mohammed is free speech but vilifying Jews and denying the Holocaust isn’t. And we don’t have a good answer.

If we’re going to preach freedom of expression around the world, we have to practice it. We have to scrap our hate-speech laws. Muslim leaders want us to extend these laws. At this week’s meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, they lobbied for tighter censorship. Egypt’s president said freedom of expression shouldn’t include speech that is “used to incite hatred” or “directed towards one specific religion.” Pakistan’s president urged the “international community” to “criminalize” acts that “endanger world security by misusing freedom of expression.” Yemen’s president called for “international legislation” to suppress speech that “blasphemes the beliefs of nations and defames their figures.” The Arab League’s secretary-general proposed a binding “international legal framework” to “criminalize psychological and spiritual harm” caused by expressions that “insult the beliefs, culture and civilization of others.”

President Obama, while condemning the video, met these proposals with a stout defense of free speech. Switzerland’s president agreed: “Freedom of opinion and of expression are core values guaranteed universally which must be protected.” And when a French magazine published cartoons poking fun at Mohammed, the country’s prime minister insisted that French laws protecting free speech extend to caricatures.

This debate between East and West, between respect and pluralism, isn’t a crisis. It’s a stage of global progress. The Arab spring has freed hundreds of millions of Muslims from the political retardation of dictatorship. They’re taking responsibility for governing themselves and their relations with other countries. They’re debating one another and challenging us. And they should, because we’re hypocrites.

From Pakistan to Iran to Saudi Arabia to Egypt to Nigeria to the United Kingdom, Muslims scoff at our rhetoric about free speech. They point to European laws against questioning the Holocaust. Monday on CNN, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad needled British interviewer Piers Morgan: “Why in Europe has it been forbidden for anyone to conduct any research about this event? Why are researchers in prison? … Do you believe in the freedom of thought and ideas, or no?” On Tuesday, Pakistan’s U.N. ambassador, speaking for the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, told the U.N. Human Rights Council:

We are all aware of the fact that laws exist in Europe and other countries which impose curbs, for instance, on anti-Semitic speech, Holocaust denial, or racial slurs. We need to acknowledge, once and for all, that Islamophobia in particular and discrimination on the basis of religion and belief are contemporary forms of racism and must be dealt with as such. Not to do so would be a clear example of double standards. Islamophobia has to be treated in law and practice equal to the treatment given to anti-Semitism.

He’s right. Laws throughout Europe forbid any expression that “minimizes,” “trivializes,” “belittles,” “plays down,” “contests,” or “puts in doubt” Nazi crimes. Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic extend this prohibition to communist atrocities. These laws carry jail sentences of up to five years. Germany adds two years for anyone who “disparages the memory of a deceased person.”

Hate speech laws go further. Germany punishes anyone found guilty of “insulting” or “defaming segments of the population.” The Netherlands bans anything that “verbally or in writing or image, deliberately offends a group of people because of their race, their religion or beliefs, their hetero- or homosexual orientation or their physical, psychological or mental handicap.” It’s illegal to “insult” such a group in France, to “defame” them in Portugal, to “degrade” them in Denmark, or to “expresses contempt” for them in Sweden. In Switzerland, it’s illegal to “demean” them even with a “gesture.” Canada punishes anyone who “willfully promotes hatred.” The United Kingdom outlaws “insulting words or behavior” that arouse “racial hatred.” Romania forbids the possession of xenophobic “symbols.”

What have these laws produced? Look at the convictions upheld or accepted by the European Court of Human Rights. Four Swedes who distributed leaflets that called homosexuality “deviant” and “morally destructive” and blamed it for AIDS. An Englishman who displayed in his window a 9/11 poster proclaiming, “Islam out of Britain.” A Turk who published two letters from readers angry at the government’s treatment of Kurds. A Frenchman who wrote an article disputing the plausibility of poison gas technology at a Nazi concentration camp.

Look at the defendants rescued by the court. A Dane “convicted of aiding and abetting the dissemination of racist remarks” for making a documentary in which three people “made abusive and derogatory remarks about immigrants and ethnic groups.” A man “convicted of openly inciting the population to hatred” in Turkey by “criticizing secular and democratic principles and openly calling for the introduction of Sharia law.” Another Turkish resident “convicted of disseminating propaganda” after he “criticized the United States’ intervention in Iraq and the solitary confinement of the leader of a terrorist organization.” Two Frenchmen who wrote a newspaper article that “portrayed Marshal Pétain in a favorable light, drawing a veil over his policy of collaboration with the Nazi regime.”

Beyond the court’s docket, you’ll find more prosecutions of dissent. A Swedish pastor convicted of violating hate-speech laws by preaching against homosexuality. A Serb convicted of discrimination for saying, “We are against every gathering where homosexuals are demonstrating in the streets of Belgrade and want to show something, which is a disease, like it is normal.” An Australian columnist convicted of violating the Racial Discrimination Act by suggesting that “there are fair-skinned people in Australia with essentially European ancestry … who, motivated by career opportunities available to Aboriginal people or by political activism, have chosen to falsely identify as Aboriginal.”

My favorite case involves a Frenchman who sought free-speech protection under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights:

Denis Leroy is a cartoonist. One of his drawings representing the attack on the World Trade Centre was published in a Basque weekly newspaper … with a caption which read: “We have all dreamt of it … Hamas did it”. Having been sentenced to payment of a fine for “condoning terrorism”, Mr Leroy argued that his freedom of expression had been infringed.

The Court considered that, through his work, the applicant had glorified the violent destruction of American imperialism, expressed moral support for the perpetrators of the attacks of 11 September, commented approvingly on the violence perpetrated against thousands of civilians and diminished the dignity of the victims. Despite the newspaper’s limited circulation, the Court observed that the drawing’s publication had provoked a certain public reaction, capable of stirring up violence and of having a demonstrable impact on public order in the Basque Country. The Court held that there had been no violation of Article 10.

How can you justify prosecuting cases like these while defending cartoonists and video makers who ridicule Mohammed? You can’t. Either you censor both, or you censor neither. Given the choice, I’ll stand with Obama. “Efforts to restrict speech,” he warned the U. N., “can quickly become a tool to silence critics and oppress minorities.”  

That principle, borne out by the wretched record of hate-speech prosecutions, is worth defending. But first, we have to live up to it.

>The New Aristocracy

>Extraordinary Men Must Have Special Consideration

Here is Mark Steyn reflecting on the nouvelle ancien regime in France, which seems to have been deeply offended at the American sleight to its honour in the way those boorish Yankees have handled Dominique Strauss-Kahn–one of their own.

A man is innocent until proven guilty, and it will be for a New York court to determine what happened in M Strauss-Kahn’s suite at the Sofitel. It may well be that’s he the hapless victim of a black Muslim widowed penniless refugee maid – although, if that’s the defense my lawyer were proposing to put before a Manhattan jury, I’d be inclined to suggest he’s the one who needs to plead insanity. Whatever the head of the IMF did or didn’t do, the reaction of the French elites is most instructive. “We and the Americans do not belong to the same civilization,” sniffed Jean Daniel, editor of Le Nouvel Observateur, insisting that the police should have known that Strauss-Kahn was “not like other men” and wondering why “this chambermaid was regarded as worthy and beyond any suspicion.” Bernard-Henri Lévy, the open-shirted, hairy-chested Gallic intellectual who talked Sarkozy into talking Obama into launching the Libyan war, is furious at the lèse-majesté of this impertinent serving girl and the jackanapes of America’s “absurd” justice system, not to mention this ghastly “American judge who, by delivering him to the crowd of photo hounds, pretended to take him for a subject of justice like any other.”Well, OK. Why shouldn’t DSK (as he’s known in France) be treated as “a subject of justice like any other”? Because, says BHL (as he’s known in France), of everything that Strauss-Kahn has done at the IMF to help the world “avoid the worst.” In particular, he has made the IMF “more favorable to proletarian nations and, among the latter, to the most fragile and vulnerable.” What is one fragile and vulnerable West African maid when weighed in the scales of history against entire fragile and vulnerable proletarian nations? Yes, he Kahn!

Ah, Dominique, we are sorry.  Mea culpa.  Mea maxima culpa.