We Will Fight Them On the Beaches . . .
Some have said the abiding legacy of current Prime Minister, John Key will be that he single handedly managed to turn upstanding, decent New Zealand parents into criminals. In this he has not just been a naive fool; he has done irreparable harm.
The organization Family First has just published a video detailing the damage done to families by the brute force of tyrannical government. Continue reading
>The Lasting Legacy of John Key Is Being Written
One imagines that constitutional and legal experts will be somewhat alarmed at the Prime Minister’s wheeling and dealing over the law.
The review on the how the Police and Child, Youth and Family have been applying the anti-smacking law has just been published. The full report can be read here.
The recommendations amount to a cluster of protections and “helps” for people who are being investigated for smacking their children. No doubt they will go a long way to preventing over zealous officials running amok–although the report also assures us that such things have not been happening. Nevertheless, safeguards are deemed to be necessary–and John Key has promised that he will ensure that all the recommendations are acted upon.
What a mess. We have a situation where the law says unequivocally that using smacking to discipline a child is a crime. But a bureaucratic edifice is being built to ensure that the law is not applied. The Prime Minister is now happily chirping away telling people it is perfectly acceptable to break the law. The headline in the NZ Herald says it all: “PM: It’s okay to give light smacks”
This, we believe, is a far more serious failing of the Prime Minister than his stubborn refusal to change the law. His disrespect of the rule of law, his preference for bureaucratic management of the law so that it can be disregarded, his public declarations on how the law is to be understood and applied are disgraceful. He is quoted as saying:
Lightly smacking a child will be in the course of parenting for some parents and I think that’s acceptable. It is up to individual parents to decide how they’re going to parent their children … Some people will continue to lightly smack their child for correction, some will not. It is up to them to decide.
Good on you, mate. Another political deal all stitched up.
Can you think of any other law, any other crime, where Key’s advice might be acceptable. Take road law, for example. It is now an offence to use a hand held phone in a car. But, using the “Key doctrine” we are entitled to believe that whether you use a hand-held phone or not is a matter of personal choice. Some will continue to do it–and that’s acceptable. But because some people who really want to use their phones in cars will be intimidated by the law, we also need a bureaucratic entity to help them. Free 24/7 advice lines need to be set up, explaining how the law need not really be observed, what our rights are, the processes which the police might use when they apprehend cell phone users in cars. Pamphlets setting all these things out must be printed and given out by the police when they pull someone over for using a phone. At the top of the brochure, we need to have John Key’s attitude towards the law printed in large font: “It’s OK to break the law.” Wonderful.
Someone in caucus needs to find the mana to stand up and tell the Prime Minister to his face that his stance is simply wrong. The damage he is doing to one of the fundamental tenets of justice–the rule of law–is inappropriate and unacceptable and that it must stop. Clearly the Prime Minister has lost whatever perspective on this issue he once may have had. He appears to be blithely ignorant of the damage he is doing and of the wider dangers of his foolish position.
>Parenting in a World Gone Mad
Several years ago a colleague told us about one of his friends, living in Wellington at the time. Circumstances had resulted in this friend raising two boys as a solo-parent. Once, one of his sons got a little lippy and told his father that he was not going to allow his father to discipline him any more. Apparently his teacher at school had been instructing the child more perfectly on the insidious and immoral practice of parents disciplining their children with spanking.
“OK,” said the father. “Go to your room and pack up all your gear.” When the son sought a reason, the father replied, “We are going around to see your teacher. I will drop you off. Since you prefer her way of raising children, she can raise you from now on.” Needless to say, nothing further was ever said on that subject by the child thenceforth.
Now, a decade further along the full weight of the law stands behind a child such as this. Whatever way you like to dress it up, the father would now be breaking the law and is a criminal in its eyes. The legal rights and protections of the disciplined child are now declared by the Crimes Act to have been traduced. So, whereas the story our colleague told was one of clever and wise parenting ten years ago, evincing a rich chuckle at the time, it now assumes a far more serious cast. And desperate times call for desperate measures.
Consider this. The Bradford/Key Law, proscribing spanking for purposes of discipline and correction as a criminal assault upon a child, is built upon a world view which gives children the identical rights in law enjoyed by adults. Laying aside all the emotive claptrap which proponents of the new law have purveyed, underneath the Bradford/Key Law lies this philosophical principle. Remove or reject the principle of equal legal rights for minors, and Section 59 has no philosophical or legal or grounding in justice.
What the Bradford/Key Law actually manifests, then, is an assault upon the principle and implicit rights that actually belong to the status of being a minor. It thrusts children into the legal status of adults, with the concomitant legal responsibilities. It consequently wreaks a grievous harm upon children, removing from them a fundamental principle of protection and care.
How then do parents cope? How can children be protected from the harm which the Bradford/Key Law inflicts? On the one hand, parents still have all the legal duties and responsibilities that rightly belong to dealing with and caring for a minor. On the other, the law has determined that the child is actually a legal adult. The brute contradiction in these two positions is what makes the Bradford/Key Law tear the fabric of family life apart .
There is no point in protecting children from this disastrous mess. It is the real world. We believe the best thing to do is to face children up to the reality as soon as possible. Ironically, the more you do this with children, the more mature they become. They need to face up to the law relatively quickly. Here is where the story of the Wellington father has a great deal of relevance.
In a time of war, when the “powers” come crashing in upon families, historically families have taken extraordinary measures in order to survive. One survival mechanism was to send children away, sometimes to the other side of the world, to get them out of harm’s way. The threat of bombing or attack led parents voluntarily to make their children into orphans.
So, here is how we believe parents should consider helping their children face up to the new law. Firstly, when the kids are about five or six (that is, school age) it should be explained to them that they are living in a dangerous world—one in which the government believes they should be treated as if they were adults. This, of course, is terribly wrong. But it is the truth.
Secondly, explain to them how their mum and dad love their children so much that they are going to ignore the law, and will continue to discipline them diligently. (In our household, discipline—its rules, methods, and purposes are always openly talked about, objectified, and discussed. Then when discipline has to be applied, the kids understand and accept it positively.) But, at the same time, the children now have to be made aware that in our dangerous world this turns mum and dad into criminals. Therefore, kids, we do not talk to anyone about what happens in our family—especially teachers, but also playmates. This puts “stranger danger” into a whole new context.
As the children get older and assert themselves more forcefully, the risks and stakes go up a bit. If kids start threatening their parents with “dobbing” them in to the authorities, they need, once again, to be spoken to directly, plainly, and honestly. They need to be told that if at any point they do not want to be part of the household they can indeed opt out. They are legally adults and have such rights. In fact the government will take them over, as it were, and will provide new parents for them. The government agency is called CYFS. If the child no longer wants to be part of the family, the parents will get them to pack up their things, and will drop them off at the nearest CYFS office tomorrow.
Then, of course, a pretty frank description of what will happen should follow: the kinds of foster homes, how many they will go through, what CYFS “love” is really like, and so forth.
We acknowledge that such reality parenting is tough stuff—but in times of warfare, parents and families have always been willing to adopt such strong and extreme measures to ensure survival. The Bradford/Key Law is just one more exigency, requiring unusual and strong measures in order to survive.
This may sound extreme, but we believe it could well come to this. Consider, for example, the case of Tania—as documented by Family First.
CHILDREN REMOVED
13. Daughter (10) dobs mum to CYF after grounding
Auckland
November 2008
Two CYF workers arrived at Tania’s* home to say there was a complaint by her daughter (10) that mum had smacked her. Tania was distraught but said that they could talk to her daughter uninterrupted to determine if she was unsafe. The social workers simply wanted to remove her (but ironically they left Tania’s 8 year old at home.) Eventually they agreed that the daughter could stay the night with the godmother. The following day, the investigation found no basis for the complaint and that it had stemmed from Tania’s daughter and a friend being angry with mum for preventing her from attending the friend’s party. Mum and Dad are now feeling very powerless with their parenting. They say “every time someone gets told off in our home you feel like you will be told on, we are being held to ransom by this new law.” Their daughter has told them that if they discipline her “we’ll go through all this again.”
Our advice would be to sit the daughter down and tell her quietly and firmly: “Oh, no, we won’t. Let us tell you what will happen when we discipline you again, and you behave like you did. We will drop you off at CYFS, since you appear to love them so much, and they can find some new parents. Goodbye and good luck.” But, don’t give the warning without carrying it out should the occasion arise.
This is tough love in the brave new world inaugurated by the Bradford/Key Law. In the light of that mad world, it is a modest and reasonable proposal.
>The Suborning of a Preppie Tyro
It’s official. John Key has now morphed. He has become archetypical of the politician in these long years of the declension and fall of the West.
Lucia Maria has kindly transcribed an awkward interview of John Key by Mike Hosking on the debacle over Section 59. It is filled with qualifications, circumlocution, fudging, hedging, and double speak. He is showing himself to have become a Class A politician: his weaving and ducking is a classic in the genre. Honest John now clothes himself in the smelly garb of Thenardier, the self-serving, amoral, venal, predatory innkeeper of Les Miserables.
The distance of hero to zero is just one small step for a politician, and John Key has taken it. By continuing to maintain that “the law is working well”, Key shows himself to have lost touch with actual, day-to-day family life. He has also lost touch with how the law actually functions. Every time you read the growing number of cases documented and published in national newspapers by Family First (and co-published on their website) your blood starts to boil. You compare the actual reality with the “beltway” myopia of “it’s all working just fine” and see intuitively and immediately how much Key has been suborned by professional insiders–and marvel that this has happened in such a short space of time.
We highlight two major deficiencies in the Prime Minister’s mental wardrobe that have allowed this transformation to take place. The first is his reported view that political success comes from focusing on the issues that matter and that in New Zealand the “heartland” issues are jobs, rising standards of living, and overall prosperity. It turns out that in Key’s mental frame issues arising out of the areas of family law and raising children are relatively unimportant and, therefore, distractions.
This view, which we might call the Key Doctrine, enunciated ad nauseam to his caucus, deserves to be ranked as one of the most inept miscalculations of recent history and explains why he has so quickly lost touch with reality. The idea that man is first and foremost “economic man” may fit with a bankrupt materialistic view of life. But it is wrong, and radically so. One of the deepest well springs of all human society is the self-sacrificial love parents bear to children. If it were not so, why would the society in general find genuine child abuse so grotesque and depraved? Despise that, and you despise the core of what it means to be a human being. Compared with that, economics never rises above the realm of the insubstantial. This is Key’s first miscalculation.
Secondly, Key apparently has not stopped to think through what he is actually saying. He acknowledges (without being honest, upfront, and candid about it) that the law in the case of Section 59 is an ass, and that it is not working. This acknowledgement is implicit in his decision to review, monitor, and establish new guidelines for the police and the agencies of state. This, says Key, will give “comfort” to NZ parents, while we get on with the really important things of putting more money into peoples’ pockets.
But, here’s the thing. Key is saying to all NZ parents: “trust us”. Key is asking New Zealanders to believe that politicians and the agencies of state can be trusted to be reasonable and apply the law of common sense.” Imagine! The sentiment comes straight out of the Annette King playbook.
What Key should be saying to the people is not, “trust me,” but “I trust you”. In moving from insisting the government fundamentally trust the people, to asking people to trust the government with their intrusions and interferences in family life, Key’s miscalculating madness stands naked and exposed.
This is far worse than light bulbs. That was just a trifling irritant. Key’s position on Section 59 is a betrayal; he has gone over to the dark side.
We will not forget.
>We Will Not Forget
It seems like it’s a season for open letters to the Prime Minister.
We reproduce below a letter from Larry Baldock to the PM on the latter’s refusal to countenance a change of the law with respect to child rearing. He, too, makes some excellent points.
One of the most disappointing aspects is the way John Key seems to have morphed from statesman to politician so quickly. He is showing signs of already being captured by the beltway and is rapidly losing touch with ordinary Kiwis. Baldock alludes to some of the indications of this in his letter.
Dear Prime Minister,
As you are aware I have led and organised the recent Citizens Initiated Referendum on the amendment to section 59 of the Crimes Act that has given all New Zealanders a chance to voice their strongly held views on a controversial subject. This was only possible because of the support given by a marvellous group of volunteers who gave their time and resources freely.
An important part of that group, at least in the first months of the campaign, were many of your Caucus members who strongly opposed the Sue Bradford’s bill, and actively collected signatures for the petition to force the referendum.
Given this common history in the referendum, and the very strong result, it would seem reasonable then that I may have been invited by you to discuss some proposals to address the widespread concerns of the majority of this country’s citizens.
In contrast, I have learnt from news reports that, prior to the referendum results being announced you have been involved in discussions with those we discover now only represent just fewer than 12 percent of the Referendum vote, such as Sue Bradford and Deborah Morris-Travers. In fact it seems that advisors from the ‘Yes” vote coalition are literally crawling all over our ‘House of Representatives.’
I shall therefore endeavour to communicate my concerns through this open letter and hope you may grant me an opportunity for personal dialogue as well.
The final results show that 87.4 percent voted ‘No!’ This means more New Zealanders voted ‘No’ in this referendum than voted for the National party in the 2008 elections and that the turnout at 56 percent was higher than for the referendum on MMP in 1992.
Your views about the rights of parents and your disapproval of the way the Helen Clark-led government ignored the majority opposition to the Bradford law are well known and documented. This makes your current position very difficult to understand and impossible to justify or defend.
When you try to reassure concerned parents with your personal promises, it seems, from the outside at least, that you are falling prey to the attitude that your predecessor developed wherein she thought as Prime Minister her opinion mattered more than anyone else’s, and that it was within her power to take care of everyone.
With all due respect John, you will not be Prime Minister forever. If you leave the Bradford law on our statutes any future government will be able to change the police and CYFS policy guidelines by executive decree, without reference to the democratically elected House of Representatives. This would render your short-term proposals aimed at giving comfort to the good parents of New Zealand null and void.
Prime Minister, good parents do not want words of comfort they want legislative change!
Your continued claims that the ‘law is working well’ are not enhancing anyone’s view of your comprehension of what the law was supposed to do, and what it is in fact accomplishing.
As a parliamentarian you will know that the purpose of a bill is summed up in its ‘purpose clause’. It is impossible to properly evaluate whether or not the law as enacted is working well, except by reference to the purpose clause of the Bill itself.
Sue Bradford’s purpose clause was “The purpose of this Act is to amend the principal Act to make better provision for children to live in a safe and secure environment free from violence by abolishing the use of parental force for the purpose of correction”.
Here in clause 4 of her Bill we have the purpose and the means of achieving that purpose, defined very clearly, namely to reduce violence towards children (child abuse) by abolishing the use of parental force for correction!
The continued abuse and sickening deaths of children since the Bill was passed is proof that it is not achieving that purpose. The awful abuse continues, and Sue Bradford herself readily admits, “My bill was never intended to solve this problem”. (National Radio Dec 2007)
So not only is the law not working, but also that lofty goal has long since been abandoned by its sponsor!
When you claim that no good parents are being criminalised I think you are referring to ‘prosecuted’. [Which is the Yes Vote line as previously blogged – S1] The police records do indicate that the numbers of prosecutions are low at this point for smacking or minor acts of discipline offences, but the truth is that every parent that continues to use a smack for correction is automatically criminalised.
After all, wouldn’t we consider a thief a criminal once they stole possessions that were not their own, regardless of whether they were caught by the police and prosecuted? After being found guilty in court their status would then be changed to that of a convicted criminal.
The number of prosecutions by the police of good parents is therefore not evidence of whether the law is working or not. The law has an effect on every good parent in this country even if a single prosecution has not been laid.
You may not have had to deal with the circumstances created when your child comes home from school to announce that they had been informed that they should report Mummy or Daddy to the teacher if they are smacked, but many have.
Your proposal to solve this dilemma appears to be that parents should wilfully break the law of the country, while disciplining their children for breaking the rules within the family home! This forces many parents into the awful position of a hypocritical ‘do as I say, not do as I do’ type parenting which should not be recommended by anyone, least of all the Prime Minister.
A useful test of the efficacy of the new law might be to determine how many more prosecutions the police are bringing before the courts against real child abusers. This is because supporters of the amendment to Sec 59 constantly claim that the police were hindered from prosecuting real child abusers because the previous Sec 59 defence of reasonable force meant they could easily be acquitted. They claimed that as a result the police were not even bothering to bring charges against these criminals.
This of course was not supported by a proper study of case law over the past 15 years, or the police statistics.
However, if this is the justification for the new law we should have seen a dramatic increase in the number of police prosecutions for crimes against our children, given that any use of force by parents for correction is now prohibited.
Police records and statements by Deputy Commissioner Rob Pope in the last police report on the new law saying that “its business as usual for the police” clearly confirms that the law is not working in that regard.
There is only one way in which it could be claimed the law is working, (though I cannot believe that this is what you mean), and that it is that progress is being made towards the total abolition of the use of parental force for the purpose of correction.
While prosecutions at this stage are low, the latest police report confirms that the police have issued a considerable number of warnings. What is the purpose of those warning Prime Minister? Does not a warning imply that the police have informed the traumatised family members that have just been subject to an investigation that they should not use force for the purpose of correction again, or else prosecution would likely follow. Surely that must be the case.
Because the purpose of the law is to ultimately stop parents from using any force for the purpose of correction!
All your promises and words of comfort are meaningless since the police are to be independent in enforcing the law in New Zealand. We have had enough of the police asking the PM whether they should prosecute or not with ‘paintergate’ and the failure to prosecute Heather Simpson over the illegal spending of taxpayer money in the 2005 elections.
New Zealanders are not stupid and they were not confused about the referendum question. They have understood from the very beginning what Sue Bradford and her supporter’s real intentions were. Surely you are not unaware of her motives, or have you now joined with her and the UN in their plan to run our country?
That plan was made clear in the Green party’s first press release back in 2003 when they announced they had drafted an ‘anti-smacking law’ to “stop parents physically punishing their children in line with UN demands.”
A recent survey confirmed a reduction in the number of parents using smacking for correction, which is not surprising given that it has been a criminal offence for the last two years. Unfortunately, such a decline has not resulted in a less violent society.
I guess this does reveal though, that the law is indeed working, but is that what you and the National party were committed to? Have you really become so aligned with Sue Bradford and the 12 percent minority of the country who view all discipline as violence, that you are pleased with this outcome?
If so, it must be said that your party has made a flip-flop in policy between May and June 2007, without consultation with your supporters, sufficient to make the 1984 Labour government look like angels of democracy!
Given that a recent Colmar Brunton poll showed that 90 percent of National Party voters were going to vote ‘no,’ and that the result from your own electorate was about the same, surely there are many of your loyal voters who would be shocked at the change in your views on parenting?
One of the things that made a positive impression on me, when I discussed with you how you would vote on the Prostitution Law Reform Act back in 2003, was that you said that when you were made aware of your electorates’ opposition to the proposed bill, you felt you were obligated to represent them and vote against the law.
Surely you have not abandoned your principles in just a few short years?
Prime Minister I have no personal interest in becoming your enemy, but I will speak up on behalf of 87.4 percent of Kiwis who voted ‘No’.
Many of these people feel they have lost all hope of being heard by politicians in their own country. As my wife and I criss-crossed the country many times over the 18 months in which we collected signatures to force the referendum, we encountered a great deal of despair and distrust towards parliamentarians. Having been one myself, this saddened me a great deal.
I know that most MPs generally work hard and try to do what they can to make New Zealand a better place.
However, we both know that most Kiwis do not evaluate their MPs on the basis of their daily activities but on events like this, when there is a clear choice to be made between listening to the wishes of the people or following ones own ideas or political agenda.
Given the current political landscape where both the Government and the ‘Queens Loyal Opposition’ MPs in this country are refusing to listen to the voice of the people and stand up for democracy, it is entirely possible that you may be able to disregard this referendum and survive politically for a few more years.
I am absolutely convinced however, that you will do almost irreparable harm to our democracy, and strike a deep wound in the hearts of so many of your countrymen and countrywomen.
I humble urge you to reconsider your current position,
Yours sincerely
Larry Baldock
HT: Scrubone
>Career Change Coming Up
Yesterday the Government announced $10 million has been earmarked for a new Government campaign to support families.
The Minister of Social Development, Paula Bennett made the announcement at a hastily called news conference in the Beehive. Flanked by the Prime Minister, John Key and Anne Tolley, Minister of Education, Bennett announced that money had been found within the multi-billion budget for Social Development to fund the new campaign. It will not mean any net increase in government expenditure, she assured the assembled reporters.
John Key said this was an important component in the Government’s policies to see New Zealand on the road to economic recovery. “We simply will not get sustainable economic growth unless we have strong, stable and sustainable families. There is an abundance of evidence that strong two-parent families inter-generationally linked are the bedrock for economic and productivity growth,” he said.
Bennett said that the publicity campaign would feature well known public personalities, drawn from the media, sport, and the community. They would each use the rubric “It’s OK.” When asked what would be “OK,” Minister Bennett elaborated: “the point is that we want to assure families generally, and parents in particular that it’s OK to break the law. We don’t want them living in fear and intimidation.”
The campaign will feature public figures like Sir Anand Satyanand, the Governor General and Police Commissioner, Howard Broad assuring families, “It’s OK to break the law.” Parents will be informed by trusted and respected figures that they can smack their children for purposes of correction and discipline, and that the law was never meant to be kept.
When Mr Key was asked whether this was a “flip flop” and that actually the current law was not working well, he apologised and excused himself. “I really have to go,” he said. “I have another appointment. I am due to appear with Dave Letterman as his comic relief for the evening.”
The Prime Minister said he was humbled at this wonderful opportunity to put New Zealand on the map.
Ends.
> Unbelief Always Destroys the Rule of Law
Lindsay Mitchell, in expressing her anger over the wilful obtuseness of the Prime Minister in his rejecting a Section 59 law change, reminds us that this peculiar and notorious piece of law will add to a growing list of laws which are already ignored by the agencies of State.
The list includes:
Cannabis use. You can even light up in the grounds of parliament and get ignored.
Truancy. Kids stay home and get ignored because frankly it is a relief not to have them disrupting other children.
Censorship law. Kids are prohibited from buying, borrowing or playing Xbox and Playstation games that wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the market the same kids provide.
Benefit Fraud. Thou shalt not shack up and claim a benefit. The habit is now so pervasive most people have forgotten it is against the law.
Under-age sex. Oh, let’s not even go there.
What are we to make of this wilful ignoring of the law by state authorities?
In this particular charade we are confronted by the view of law that inevitably emerges in Unbelief. As our society moves from its historical Christian roots to the enthronement of man as god, the place and function of law and justice starts to skew in a radically different direction.
Modern Unbelief seizes upon law as a redemptive tool. It looks to the law to remove sins and societal problems, prevent diseases, and make the community “righteous”. As this happens we see the garb of society’s new god emerging. For it always behoves a god to make things right. And gods, being powerful, can make things right by a word of command. As our community separates itself from the true God and “replaces” Him with man as the measure of all things, it is inevitable that society will begin to function as if it had the prerogatives and power of deity.
It is natural, therefore, that modern society would look to the promulgation of laws–the pronouncing of verbal, then codified commands–to rid the world of evils. This shift may be subtle at first, but it represents a sea change, with far reaching, deleterious consequences. The law moves from the administration of justice against evil within society to an administration of preventing evil in the first place. The law begins to function as a tool of redemption–which is to say, the law begins to fail miserably. It simply cannot bear the idolatrous expectations placed upon it. The outcome: the law is allowed to be openly disregarded, as grim reality sets in.
But Unbelief changes the role and function of law in another way. Unbelief has no way to distinguish between that which is evil and that which should be proscribed by law. After all, sins do not necessarily constitute crimes; although the reverse is not true. All crimes should by definition be sins (although as we shall see below, that too is rapidly changing). So, Unbelief inevitably drives to conflate sins and crimes: all shortcomings, all imperfections, all peccadilloes are potential crimes–and can be declared so at the stroke of a pen.
Because short comings and imperfections exist everywhere in human society, the law code within Unbelieving societies expands both rapidly and inexorably to codify almost every sphere of human activity and culture. It comes to regulate and codify what is taught in schools, what foods may be eaten, holidays, work hours, safety practices, how children are to be raised, making of phone calls while driving, the speed at which a car may be driven, regular inspections of vehicles to ensure roadworthiness, etc: the list is endless and grows relentlessly every year. The law code and its accompanying regulations becomes so vast it is impossible to know, let alone administer.
In Unbelieving society, ignorance of the law is inescapable: no-one can keep up with it. The code is so vast and all-embracing that it cannot be policed or applied consistently. So a de facto tolerance of lawbreaking and a turning of blind eyes is inevitable. The application of the law reduces to the whim of the authorities. It has to. The law increasingly becomes an ass, unless the authorities of the day on a whim decide that it is not, an begin to focus on one particular section or part of the code for a time. De facto lawbreaking by the vast majority of citizens becomes a normal way of life. The whole community in an Unbelieving society secretly believes the law is an ass; it is merely a matter of what one can get away with.
The final stage is the law as propaganda. Here Unbelieving societies move to the stage of seeing the law as a mechanism of political education or a tool for “getting a message across.” The inconsequential matter of justice has long since left the room. The application of the law is not the issue. It is the law as “teaching point” that is central. Increasingly in Unbelieving societies the law becomes a tool to “send people a message”.
Thus, in the child smacking debate, it matters not at all as to whether the law on smacking is applied or not. It “sends a message” to parents about family violence and that message is definitely more important than the medium of the law. The upshot is that the law is disrespected, trashed, and cynically used and abused.
In the end, Unbelief runs full cycle over the law. Enthroning man over God, the law is cut off from its Christian roots. Unbelief instead makes law a messianic and redemptive tool, but, of course, it cannot sustain that weight. So, Unbelieving societies end up trashing and cynically ignoring the law at their whim and convenience. This pervasively appears in both the highest and lowest ranks in society–as we have just had displayed. The Government is now telling us it will turn a “blind eye” over parents smacking their children for purposes of correction and discipline–despite the law defining it as a criminal act.
This, we are gravely told, is the law working as intended. No. This is Unbelief working its wilful self-destruction upon its own. “Those who hate God’s wisdom,” says the Scripture, “love death”.
>Lines in the Sand
Since the Prime Minister has decided that Section 59 of the Crimes Act will not be amended; and,
Since the Act stipulates that any parent who disciplines their children by smacking them is committing a criminal offence; and,
Since, the Prime Minister has indicated that the agents of state (Police, CYFS) will be directed to ignore the law . . .
We declare publicly that in our family we follow a policy of using smacking as a method of discipline of our children; we do it systematically and regularly and in a disciplined fashion; and we use it on those occasions when our children engage wilfully in repeated acts of disobedience, dishonesty, or disrespect.
If the law says we are committing a crime, albeit one which will not be prosecuted, then the law in this instance is an ass. We will continue to raise our children in a way which loves and respects them far too much to allow them to get away with wilful wrongdoing.
So, in this matter we are repeatedly committing a criminal act–and proud of it.
>Statesman or Politician
Dear Prime Minister
Madeleine at MandM has written you and the National Party caucus an open letter today on the issue of the anti-smacking legislation. It is an excellent letter, and we urge you to consider it carefully.
To her voice, we would like to add our own. You have evinced many attributes since becoming Prime Minister which have won the respect, if not admiration of the majority of New Zealanders. Not the least has been your determination to “keep your word” with the citizens of this country.
During the election you made certain promises and gave particular undertakings. To your credit you have shown yourself to be one who considers himself to be bound by his word. This is not something which we see very often in public life, particularly amongst politicians. We cannot thank you enough for this. It reflects the qualities and attributes of what it means to be a true statesman–for it respects and honours the Realm itself, the very essence of what it means to be a nation.
Let it be said that we would far rather have you as a statesman than as a “popular and competent Prime Minister”, as your predecessor liked to style herself. The latter can lead to actions deleterious and destructive to the Realm, as indeed we saw come to pass. We increasingly sensed in her particular case that it was all about “Me, myself, and I-and the nation be damned.”
So, we understand why you have been firm over the anti-smacking law. You promised to the people that you would support a change of the law if ordinary and responsible New Zealand parents were being indicted by its application. But if not, you would leave it alone. You are continuing to hold this view because you want to maintain your word with the people of this country.
But now you face a greater test over your commitment to being a statesman rather than a politician. For we would urge you to consider this: there is no worth or merit in keeping your word with the electorate when the undertakings you gave were wrong in the first place. For the reality is that if you persist in this course you weaken the state and undermine the Realm.
Despite the confusion and equivocal wording of Section 59 of the Crimes Act (a sufficient reason in itself for amending the law) a reasonable person is entitled to conclude on good grounds that the law of our land makes smacking a child for the purposes of correction a criminal act. If you attempt to deflect or neutralise this by promulgating policies which direct the police and state agencies to administer the law as if it did not say what it actually says, the Realm is damaged and weakened. In other words, if as government you direct the agencies of state to interpret the law so as to turn a “blind eye” to smacking for purposes of correction and discipline, despite what the law actually says, you are suspending the rule of law.
Yes, we are aware that the action would be pragmatic. It would “get the result” you have always said you wanted. For a time. But consider at what cost. We would learn from this that the government believes the application of the law should be a matter of police and state agency discretion; that it is a legitimate role for the Executive intentionally to misinterpret and misdirect the law; and that the law is an egregious “wax nose” to be twisted at will with the change of political winds. Your stated position regrettably undermines the respect for the rule of law and of Parliament itself. It, therefore, is a position inimical to the Realm itself.
Mr Key, you have already reneged on promises you have to the people at the last election. Because of the present winter of economic and fiscal straits, you cancelled the tax cuts promised the people. You explained that exigencies and circumstances had changed. You met the situation head on and took the decision you believed to be in the best interests of the Realm. We may disagree, but we respect your stand and the principled way the decision was taken.
This is even more serious. Your promise was wrong from the start. It was disrespectful to the law, to Parliament, to the Realm. You were wrong. You made a mistake–albeit a well-meaning one. There is absolutely no merit in continuing with this. A true statesman would acknowledge the error and would change the law to say exactly what you wish it would say–you and the vast majority of citizens in this country.
We call on you, Mr Key, to continue as you have begun. We urge you in the matter of Section 59 to be first and foremost a statesman of the Realm, not a politician. Show your respect for the law by changing it, properly and formally. Egregious attempts to massage or “frame” the law for the agencies of state would be something a politician, not a statesman would do.
>Being John Roughan
We could not help feeling a smidgeon of sympathy for Herald columnist, John Roughan when reading his piece today. He is taking a position on the smacking referendum that is contrary to the vast majority of the great unwashed, and that carries a price.
When a rationalist, such as Roughan, argues against widely held views, it inevitably means that he has to claim wisdom, insight, or perspicacity that is beyond the sight of ordinary mortals. Roughan, of course, does not have the benefit of divine revelation. He has only his superior reasoning powers–with which he deigns to grace us in his piece. But when most ordinary people disagree one is forced into adopting a posture of presenting oneself as being extraordinarily very clever.
The piece commences with a conspiracy theory–a hallmark of every sophisticated elite. According to our mentor the ordinary man would do well to look twice at public advocates, such as Bob McCoskrie who are campaigning against the criminalisation of smacking, as having a hidden agenda–a sinister agenda. It is creepy. Yes, you read it here first. Roughan is so sharp and intelligent that he sees beyond the capacity of ordinary mortals. He is able to look into hearts and minds and is able to discern true motives. And he does not like what he sees.
There is something very creepy about this smacking referendum now arriving in the mail. What exactly do the citizens behind this initiative, men like Bob McCoskrie, mean by “good parental correction”?
But a good, card carrying rationalist, such as Roughan, will not rest his case just on suspicions and innuendo. He will buttress it with some sharp analysis. We await, breathless. Well, it’s as plain as the nose on my face, says Roughan, that the law already allows and endorses parents smacking their children. “Well, duh,” he says, “nothing could be more plain.” He points out the following sections in the current law:
“Every parent of a child, and every person in the place of a parent of a child, is justified in using force if the force used is reasonable in the circumstances and is for the purpose of:
a) preventing or minimising harm to the child or another person; or
b) preventing the child from engaging or continuing to engage in conduct that amounts to a criminal offence; or
c) preventing the child from engaging or continuing to engage in offensive or disruptive behaviour; or
d) performing the normal daily tasks that are incidental to good care and parenting.”
Now, says one of the sharpest minds of our age, clearly this covers all kinds of infant behaviour.
For example: Could a parent really be criminalised for a light smack to stop a child running across a road or putting a finger near a light socket? I doubt it. See ‘a’ above.
Could parents be prosecuted for smacking the hand of a child taking things from a shop shelf? No, see ‘b’. Or taking something from another kid? See ‘c’. Hitting someone? See ‘a’ again.
Throwing a tantrum in a supermarket? ‘c’. Fighting? ‘a’ or ‘c’. Teasing? ‘c’. Swearing? ‘c’. Insolence? ‘c’. If those clauses do not cover everything, the last, ‘d’, seems wide enough to deal with all persistent disobedience.
A smack may not be the best way to deal with any of these but the new Section 59 (1) of the Crimes Act permits reasonable force if a parent must.
Well, there you have it then. This is where we dive down to the real depths of insight where only the intellectual elite are able to go. Even a dumbass can see that the law allows and endorses smacking of children, says Roughan. So, McCoskrie and his nefarious band must have something else in mind–something they don’t want you to know about. This is the creepy part.
What? Help us, oh great one! We beg you. We are just ordinary people. What do you see?
Well, all right then. If I must. We are going to get a bit subtle now–but that is what a prodigy like me has to do all the time–so stay with me, unwashed one.
Mr McCoskrie’s group is more interested in a second subsection, which says “Nothing in subsection (1) or in any rule of common law justifies the use of force for the purpose of correction.”
Ah, correction. What is that?
Mr McCoskrie says it means the same sort of smack and hence the confusion. But lawmakers do not deliberately compose contradictions. They must mean something different by subsection (2). That is how judges will reason if they are asked to interpret the word correction.
We are hanging in there, Mr Roughan. So we can do all that smacking of children for all the things you mentioned. But we cannot smack them so as to correct them? So, what does it mean to correct a child? “At last. Finally,” says Mr Roughan, “we have got to the point which my rapier like intellect took me to hours ago. Once again, it is as plain as my nose, what correction means. It has now become a technical legal and judicial term. It does not mean what it used to mean. It means something different–which only elites understand. And, I hasten to add, nefarious bastards, like McCoskrie. Although he is not part of the elite, he is a malicious clever little devil. He knows what it means, which is why he is creepily trying to change the law.”
It is clear that judges, politicians, police, CYFS, and other assorted members of the intelligentsia see what ordinary, uneducated, rustic rubes do not.
As the word [correction] is used in public policy nowadays it means serious systematic punishment. (It also means “delayed” punishment, but we will only throw that adjective in later.) The penal arm of the state is now called the Department of Corrections. A prison is a “Corrections Facility”.
Lightbulb! “Correction” has become a technical term, meaning “serious systematic punishment”. How perspicacious is that! How come you see that, Mr Roughan, and we ordinary people do not?
Well, duh! The prison department is called the Department of Corrections. A prison is a place of serious, delayed, systematic punishment. Therefore, “correction” is a term referring to “serious systematic, delayed punishment”. Therefore, when the law prohibits the use of smacking for correction, it is prohibiting its use for “serious systematic delayed punishment”. All us intellectuals and elites see it right away. And we also see that McCoskrie and his mob are trying to reinstate “serious systematic delayed punishment” of children–which is why we find him creepy and sinister.
So, Dear Enlightened One, we are now coming to see more clearly. All correction of children, of whatever kind, must be equally wrong and illegal. Put bluntly–for that is what us uneducated people do–it is now both immoral and illegal to correct children, period. “Correction” does not mean discipline, training, education, or instruction–which in our more primitive world it does–but it now means “serious systematic delayed punishment”. It must be equally illegal to use talking, reasoning, physical restraint, “time out”, or any other regular, planned, consistent and diligent techniques for correction–for correction means “serious systematic delayed punishment”. Gotcha.
It must be so neat to be so insightful and clever. For a fleeting second a slight supercilious smile appears on Mr Roughan’s face. Yes–and here’s the real point. Let us be very, very clear that those truly evil people like McCoskrie have a hidden agenda which us truly enlightened one’s can see a mile off. They want to reintroduce “serious systematic delayed punishment” of children, aka “correction”:
Delayed, systematic parental correction is the old-fashioned hiding. It was often called a “good hiding”.
That is what the recent amendment to the Crimes Act has criminalised. That, I suspect, is the “good parental correction” we are being asked to endorse in this referendum.
The ritual thrashings that children used to receive “when your father comes home”, may be rare today but not in some sections of society we hear.
Those who initiated the referendum know what the new law says. They know it permits reasonable force for all the preventive situations they are fond of citing.
They pretend it does not because they could not attract majority support for the restoration of the right to flog children. Don’t be deceived by them.
Unmasked. McCoskrie wants to flog children. Literally. In a delayed manner. In a systematic fashion. Because we all now know what correction really means, don’t we?
We think we have just seen one of the most specious, duplicitous, deceitful bits of empty sophistry foisted upon the New Zealand public since Maui fished up the North Island. It is so bad, one wonders whether it would be both kind and charitable to believe that Mr Roughan “under the influence” when he wrote the piece.
In any event, he has a lot of work to do, educating and convincing people of his peculiar perspective on the English language. He should educate CYFS staff to begin with. Then move on to the entire police force. The justices and the courts will then need his attention. And, there is the small matter of eighty percent of the rest of the population.
It’s a big price to pay–but you get that when you are part of an elite.
>Say Goodbye to Lost Generations
Scrubone has helpfully published the advice of Barnados to parents who are struggling to get their children to go to school. Apparently a swift smack on the bottom used to do the trick, but now that it is illegal more and more parents don’t know what to do to get their children to attend school.
But, no probs. The wise and practical folk at Barnados have devised appropriate alternative ways to motivate children to attend school. If it were not so serious, it would warrant Barnados being awarded comic-of-the-decade status.
Read Scrubone’s piece, and weep.
>Coruscating Clarity
We have been gratified that virtually overnight the nation has become fixated upon clarity, clear speaking, and to all intents and purposes has decided that equivocation in matters of law or referenda is a serious cancer in the body politic.
This has to be a major step forward in the reformation of our nation. The matter at issue, of course, is the upcoming referendum on the galatically stupid and very harmful anti-smacking law. Critics have criticised the referendum because the question that it asks is allegedly unclear or ambiguous or is a “loaded” or “leading” question.
For example, one luminary has slammed the referendum question as follows:
The wording of the forthcoming referendum isn’t just ambiguous, it’s an indictment of the intelligence of those behind it. “Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?” No thinking person regardless of their personal parenting philosophy can answer that question in good faith.
We are grateful to Finlay Macdonald for that particular piece of coruscating brilliance. Another luminary, none other than the Prime Minister himself, has almost descended into whining that the referendum question is “so confusing that if you want to vote yes, you have to vote no”. With all due respect to the Prime Minister, we are aware that the government education system is failing, but we did not realise that education and literacy standards had fallen so low in New Zealand that the following question would be unclear: “Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?”
Well, maybe it is unclear. Who are we to judge. After all, we are certainly not luminaries. We do not write op-ed pieces in prestigious newspapers. Neither do we hold high political office in the land. We are just plain ordinary run-of-the-mill simple folk.
So, duly chastened, we went in search of clarity. We found it. Not only did we find it, but it was a piece of writing approved by the very same John Key, Prime Minister of New Zealand, who put it forward as a way to clear up all the confusion that surrounded the issue of whether smacking a child would be illegal in New Zealand. Clearly, if you would pardon the expression, we could expect wording that was beyond reasonable doubt.
Here is the current, amended law:
Parental control
(1) Every parent of a child and every person in the place of a parent of the child is justified in using force if the force used is reasonable in the circumstances and is for the purpose of—
(a) preventing or minimising harm to the child or another person; or
(b) preventing the child from engaging or continuing to engage in conduct that amounts to a criminal offence; or
(c) preventing the child from engaging or continuing to engage in offensive or disruptive behaviour; or
(d) performing the normal daily tasks that are incidental to good care and parenting.
(2) Nothing in subsection (1) or in any rule of common law justifies the use of force for the purpose of correction.
(3) Subsection (2) prevails over subsection (1).
(4) To avoid doubt, it is affirmed that the Police have the discretion not to prosecute complaints against a parent of a child or person in the place of a parent of a child in relation to an offence involving the use of force against a child, where the offence is considered to be so inconsequential that there is no public interest in proceeding with a prosecution.
What on earth does that mean? Yes, dear folks, we have before us the paragon of clarity. Legalistic precision. Clear as mud.
This is John Key’s version of clarity. This is the sort of thing which the Finlay Macdonald’s of this world find to be crystal clear. It is so clear that nobody knows what it means. It is so turgidly dense that we are told that “subsection (2) prevails over subsection (3)” which is a clear indication that the two sections are contradictory. It is so opaque that is requires an “avoidance of doubt” qualification which says that the police are empowered to have discretion on a case-by-case basis to decide whether the law has been broken to the extent that it warrants prosecution.
Against the background of this legal morass–where the law has become in every possible way and sense an ass–we find the referendum question to be blindingly and refreshingly obvious, simple, and clear. It is so clear, in comparison, that it threatens to burn our eyes. It is so patently obvious that it does not even need a “for the avoidance of doubt” clause.
We are convinced that with the current law as the background, the child-smacking referendum question is offensive to so many precisely because it cuts through the legalistic obfuscation and confusion of the current law so cleanly. The question is focused, sharp, and honed to cut. It is succeeding already.
That is why John Key’s opinion on the alleged confusion of the question comes across as whining. That is why Finlay Macdonald’s scribblings are risible. The question can be asked, and answered in good faith, dear boy precisely because the law, as it now stands, is such a stupid, confused mess. A veritable dog’s breakfast.
That is also why good parents in New Zealand are now intimidated by the State and live in fear. Mr Key has forgotten or chooses conveniently to overlook that having the State take children away from parents by force is a worse punishment than prison itself. It is the ultimate sanction any parent faces. And the de facto consequence of the current law is that it encourages the State to do just that, whether or not police decide to prosecute a parent for smacking a child to train and discipline him or her. That is why parents feel intimidated and cowed. That is why the current law is destructive and harmful and ultimately an evil piece of law.
>The Orwellian Masterpiece
Nandor Tankfull stared vacantly off into the middle distance. “How did that happen, man?” he wondered. He had left Parliament at the last election, announcing that he wanted to “chill out” and regroup. He had spent many years, far too many wasted years as a Green MP trying to de-criminalise wacky-backy. He had failed. Too many entrenched interests, funded by big tobacco of course–and, well, yes oil companies as well. They funded everything. They had effectively taken control of the main political parties years ago. People like John Key and Helen Clark were just puppets.
Now, after spending some time in the bush, growing and smoking your own, as one does, he had returned to civilisation only to find that in his absence marijuana had been de-criminalised. He would ordinarily have been deeply depressed, thinking that all those years he must have been the real impediment to decriminalising his favourite weed all along. No sooner had he left Parliament than it was no longer a criminal offence. But thankfully he was too chilled out. His befuddled brain was trying and failing to grasp the new reality.
Sue Bradford stared at her old friend, pitying his confused state–yet at the same time chuckling inwardly. She snorted another line. “You don’t know the half of it, Nandi. The trouble with you is that you were always too direct, too obvious. Me, I am subtle in a sorta bus-like way. It’s all about feints and false moves. You should have read Sun Tzu’s Art of War when I told you.”
Nandor wondered what she meant. He asked his old friend to explain. “Well, take this snowflake I am snorting. It’s effectively decriminalised as well, now.” She went on to explain that for years she had perpetrated the feint of campaigning against child abuse. “It was all a front, Nandi. Isn’t that what Lenin and Stalin taught us years ago when we were reading them in the Socialist Action League? Remember. All those apparently legit organisations, but all fronts for us hard core radicals. In the end as you play their games, they trip themselves up and you watch them gut themselves.”
There was a bitter stridency to her tone now. No doubt the coke was kicking in. Nandor looked normal and vacant. She began to describe the clever dissimulation of campaigning against child abuse. Then, having eventually manipulated the stupid Clark over a political precipice, Sue described how she had put that oh-so-secret call in to the President of the Law Commission, suggesting the clever compromise. “But the trick is that it mustn’t be seen to come from me, Geoffrey”, she had purred down the phone.
“No worries,” the ge’ed up former law prof had said. “Leave it to me. I know just the man to use.” So it had come to pass. The gullible John Key, the oh-so-clever-by-half-currency trader, fell for it hook, line, and sinker. It was like something straight out of Molotov’s playbook. “Key got to look like a statesman. Clark was shafted and made to look a fool. I got what we wanted all along. Drugs are now effectively decriminalised in New Zealand.”
Nandor had never thought of Sue as an intellectual. But it was clear that she was operating in realms in which he had never travelled. It was all too hard to grasp. Sue was patient, as one is when dealing with a lesser mortal. She carefully explained how it all worked. Firstly, all smacking of children was now a criminal offence. Anyone who smacked or exercised any force at all against children was now committing a criminal act, according to the law. Secondly, the real point lay right here. “Regardless of the law, you are not a criminal unless the Police decide to prosecute. That’s it, Nandi. That’s the stroke of brilliance. At one fell swoop we changed the definition of crime and criminality in New Zealand. And they were too dumb to see it.”
A glimmer of light began to glow in the deep recesses of Nandor’s drugged brain. “OK, I get it. Maybe. Or not.”
Sue’s patience was fast wearing thin. “Get with the plan, Stupid,” she snapped. “It’s all about seizing control. The law now makes everyone a criminal, which is to say that no-one is a criminal, unless . . .”
“Unless the Police or the State decide to prosecute,” said Nandor slowly and carefully. Sue sighed with relief. “At last, dumbo. You have got it. Eureka! We learnt this years ago in the Socialist Action League. If everyone is a criminal and is committing criminal acts, then the State can act at any time, when it wants, and how it wants against whom it wants. If crime is what the State says it is, when it decides to take notice, as and when it pleases, everybody is under its total implicit control at all times.”
“So that’s why you are saying that grass is now kosher.” Sue nodded. She explained how everything was now OK–drugs, murder, theft. It was all effectively decriminalised. They would only became criminal matters if the Police decided to take action. If you controlled the Police you were effectively free to do anything. The rule of law was now extinct–at least in principle. Crime was now defined by the Police and its actions, not the law. New Zealand had just taken a huge step forward in progressing to be a police state.
“And the stupid idiots in Parliament don’t know it. That’s the beauty of this. They are now defending the Revolution. We have got them arguing that smacking is a crime only when the Police say it is. We have actually got them agreeing and saying, ‘It is working well!’ And they are having to say it so emphatically. Hah. They don’t even know what they are actually doing.”
Nandor began to think about the new world Sue had almost single-handedly created. If it were up to the police to decide what was a crime and what was not, the law had become a spent force. But to go further, if the laws on the statute books were expanded so that everyone going about their normal business was effectively defined to be a criminal, then they could be picked up at any time. Whoever controlled the Police would have almost unlimited powers. All opponents could be criminalised at will. And it would all be “legal”. Parliament and the courts were now mere appendages. Everyone would be fearful and subject to threat and intimidation.
As Nandor reflected on how the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition party were all cheerleading for this brave new world, he smiled, took a deep long drag, and nodded. John Key and Phil Goff were only puppets all right. But the game had changed and they didn’t know it. Sue had just become a legend in his own mind.
Hat Tips: Stephen Franks; Half Done.
>Cindy Kiro’s World of Half Truths and False Gods
“Violence breeds violence”, has become Cindy Kiro’s new mantra as she seeks to defend the recent law banning smacking. She has at her fingertips, no doubt, countless examples and case studies of families where children were thrashed and abused when young. Then, in adulthood, those children subsequently went on to acts of violence, lawlessness, and degenerate behaviour, including violent abuse of their own children.
Kiro is right. We didn’t need the sociological evidence or case studies to know that children grow up to walk in the footsteps of their parents. Parents who inflict uncontrolled, enraged violence on their children will produce children who are, either smashed in spirit and will as adults, or are equally lawless and violent as adults in their turn. But ironically this is also why Kiro is also completely wrong—or more to the point, naïve and simplistic.
She is only doing what all bureaucrats are forced into when they administer laws and regulations that are unjust and immoral: focus on superficial externalities that can be controlled and measured and administered. Since governments cannot change hearts and minds they are reduced to play acting with mere externalities. But they do so at at our peril—since the long and ignoble history of such hubris is that the problems only become worse, much worse.
As a result of Kiro’s half truths, now institutionalised into the New Zealand legal fabric where smacking a child for the purpose of training and correction has become a crime, expect a torrent of societal violence to pour down in the next thirty years. Of course by that time Kiro will be long forgotten, as will Helen Clark and Sue Bradford, except perhaps for their respective parts in a government to which historians are likely to attach the sobriquet of being the most corrupt and corruptible in New Zealand’s history.
But they will have been replaced with other, equally deluded, Athenian idolaters. Socialists all. Humanists all. Destroyers all.
Why am I so confident of this outcome—painful though it is to contemplate? Because Kiro is both right and wrong. She is right about the intergenerational connection with respect to violence (and the intergenerational connection of just about everything else—which is, of course, the way the Living God has made the world of men to operate and so it is and always will be the norm.) However, she is completely simplistic as to her definition of violence. Violence incorporates force of whatever kind—whether physical, verbal, emotional, or psychological.
There are two kinds of family violence—and they are worlds apart. Kiro has failed to discern this, or has deliberately decided to ignore it. The first is where forcible correction is administered to children by parents who are training and correcting their children, for the children’s sake, so as to change their hearts, minds, and wills. The second is where parents are disciplining their children for their own (the parents’) sake, out of anger, frustration, and selfishness. As stated above, these two are worlds apart. The outward actions may appear the same, but they are as different as water to hydrochloric acid.
In the case of the former—where discipline is for the sake of training the children—the rules and regulations of the home are clearly thought through and articulated to the children. Breaking the rules brings consistent juridical consequences, until the child is trained out of that behaviour. Discipline is never done in anger, annoyance, frustration, impatience, or temper. The voice is never raised. Regardless of the emotional stresses upon the parents, they too regard themselves as under discipline, and so control themselves to administer correction faithfully, fairly, and always for the sake of the child’s wellbeing. In this context discipline is never retributive. It is always and only corrective. When the behaviour changes, the discipline ceases—or moves on to other issues.
In this case, violence does most certainly not breed violence. It breeds the very opposite. It produces peace, self-control, respect, and ultimately a productive member of the community.
In the case of the latter, discipline is erratic, mercurial, tempestuous, filled with anger and frustration. One day the parent/adult might ignore a child’s actions because they are in a good mood. The next they explode and vent their wrath upon the little one for the self-same actions—because the child has done something to annoy them and they are in a bad, angry mood. In this context the violence is always retributive—it is a lawless act of retribution upon the child for the parent’s perception of hurt and damage to them by the child.
People who are particularly uncontrolled and narcissistically self-absorbed will not stop from pouring our physical violence upon their children, regardless of what the law says. Moreover because blood is thicker than water, family groups will always move cover it up. The new law will have the unintended effect of driving the violence underground—so that its very existence in a family will have already placed that family into the orbit of the criminal underworld.
In the case of the less physically violent, emasculated metrosexuals, family violence amongst self-absorbed parents is more likely to take the equally destructive form of parental temper tantrums, screaming, biting and caustic words, sarcasm, ridicule, and bitterness poured out upon the children. While the bruises may not be physical, the home environment will be likely toxic in the extreme, leading to the destruction of the child’s spirit. The consequence for the children will be growing up into one of two probable types: either the child will grow up mimicking the parents’ lawless, uncontrolled outbursts of selfish petulance returning evil for evil upon the heads of their parents and anyone else who crosses them. Or, beaten and cowed, they will grow up broken and brooding—damaged beyond repair.
Either way, within two generations their line will have assumed a criminal mindset.
Governments and bureaucratic controls always focus upon outward behaviours, the tangible, the things that they believe can be subject to regulation, rules, bans, and controls. While statist governments aspire to the omnicompetence of deity, they lack just a few of the essential attributes. So their self-vaunted pride and vain boasting ends up focusing upon superficial externalities. What they promulgate ends up being naïve and simplistic in the extreme.
How about this for a novel approach. What would happen if Athens stood up and told the truth to its citizens? What would happen if the government admitted that it was utterly powerless and incompetent to control or change family life, and that any attempt to do so would make the problems many times worse? What would happen if the government told its citizens that each and every parent, each and every family had to sort it out and take responsibility for themselves?
We all know what would happen. The citizens would reject that government and vote another in its place. The people would regard acknowledged governmental incompetence and the need for self-accountability and self-responsibility as blasphemous. For both citizens and governments in Athens want a god. They need a god. To the modern man god is where the power is—which means the government.
So, the outlook for modern Athenian society is bleak. Its prescriptions for reformation and holiness within the human heart, mind, and soul are doomed to failure—regardless of the particular policy or government of the day. Its prescriptions will serve to make matters much worse. In the end, the only hope is to turn back to the Living God, Whom they have sneered at, ridiculed, derided, and mocked for many years
And what does God do in response? He laughs at them. Consider carefully the words of this Psalm which describe so clearly the dynamic of what is happening in these days in our nation—and what will be the outcome, in the days to come:
“Why are the nations in an uproar,
And the peoples devising a vain thing?
The kings of the earth take their stand,
And the rulers take counsel together
Against the Lord and against His Anointed”
‘Let us tear their fetters apart,
And cast away their cords from us!’“He Who sits in the heavens laughs,
The Lord scoffs at them.
Then He will speak to them in His anger
And terrify them in His fury . . .“Now, therefore, O kings, show discernment
Take warning, O judges of the earth.
Worship the Lord with reverence,
And rejoice with trembling.
Do homage to the Son, lest He become angry, and you perish in the way,
For His wrath may soon be kindled.
How blessed are all who take refuge in Him.”Psalm 2
So, there is an inevitability here. All will be made to bow before God. All mockery, ridicule, and sneering will cease. The only question is how it will cease. Either it will cease as Athenians hear the summons of God to repent and turn back, once again to kiss the feet of His beloved Son, or it will cease as His wrath is poured out upon them and the wretched city they have built.
And every day Jerusalem calls to Athenians, urging them to leave the Gomorrah of their vanity and the Sodom of their rebellion, and to enter the wide, cool, wholesome avenues of Jerusalem, where waters flow and fruit trees grow in rich unending abundance. Give up on your false prophets, your Cindy Kiros, and their rules, their regulations, their bans, and their false gods. Their city already lies desolate and barren. Return to God, own Him as your God, and be saved—while it is still today.
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Marriage: A Biblical Key to Success and Fulfillment
The early chapters of Genesis give us the ground rules for playing out the great human drama which we call history, or more accurately, what should be referred to as redemptive history, for it is redemptive history that is the overlord of all particular histories. Redemptive history is God’s fulfilling of His purposes and plans on the earth, for man, throughout the aeons, ages, centuries and generations. All human histories are but sub-sets or aspects of this great meta-history.
The Christian view of history is fundamentally different from all philosophies of history found in Athens. At root there are at least three things that set the Christian perspective apart from all the false alternatives:
The course of history in its entirety is pre-ordained and pre-determined by the Living God. His decree governs the course of mankind upon the earth exhaustively and completely. So, for example, we read: “Remember the former things long past. For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure.’” (Isaiah 46:9,10)
Since AD33, all subsequent human history has come under the aegis of the Lord Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, and ascended to the right hand of the Living God, and seated upon the throne. He holds all authority in heaven and upon earth, and all the nations are now being gradually and inevitably brought under His authority, by His Word and Spirit.
All human history and histories are being ruled and governed so as to fulfill a fundamental divine purpose―the manifestation of the glory of the Living God. This purpose is all embracing and incorporates both the evil and the good, the righteous and the unrighteous, and the rise and fall of kingdoms, nations, principalities and powers. So, in Romans we read: “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like this,’ will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use, and another for common use? What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so in order that He might make know the riches of His glory upno vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory.” (Romans 9:2―23)
Genesis gives us the “ground rules” as to how redemptive history has been and will be played out. It does not tell us everything about how the “game” is to be played, but everything that is added thereafter in God’s Word is a development, or a refinement of what God tells us in these chapters. Genesis, then, gives us the goal posts and the boundaries of play; it also tells us the objectives of the game, and the essential rules of how the game of history is to be played out.
The Christian or Believing Mind is one which thinks God’s thoughts after Him, seeking to ensure that every thought and imagination is in conformity with reality. The Christian knows that reality is that which has been ordained, commanded, and decreed by God. Bluntly, reality is what God says it is. There is no potentiality or actuality beyond God’s all conditioning control of the world and what He has declared concerning the world and all that is in it.
This is why Jerusalem is culturally powerful. Jerusalem sees things as they really are. As the citizens of Jerusalem think and act according to the way things have actually been made to work, Jerusalem’s power and influence grows. It is the difference between rowing with the tide or against it. Jerusalem, as she thinks God’s thoughts after Him, and acts consistently with those thoughts, sails swiftly on a strong running tide.
All the “Foundations in Genesis” essays have sought to discuss one or more of these constitutive ground rules for human life and history. This essay deals with the central importance of marriage to the great drama.
In Genesis 1:26 we are told that on the sixth day, the Lord created man in His own image, “male and female He created them.” Genesis 2:18―25 provides more detail about the process of creating mankind male and female. The process was deliberate, and it is revelational―that is, the process teaches us some vital principles and truths about the world and how it is made to work.
The key points are:
Both male and female are equally in God’s image: they are metaphysically equal. From this point on, any role differentiation or any “superior-inferior” distinctions between the sexes have only to do with operational functionality, not with relative metaphysical value of being. In an orchestra, the conductor is “superior” to the instrumentalists; the second and third violinists take their lead from the first violin and he or she from the conductor, in turn.
Everyone understands that this is necessary to make the orchestra play as one, with each part integrating into the whole. But, it would be preposterous to suggest, therefore, that the conductor was more, or a better human being than the instrumentalists. He or she leads for reasons of operational functionality, not for reasons based upon the essence or superiority of being. (This needs to be emphasized in our day because our age seems to have become grossly confused at this point.)
It was not good for man to be alone. (Genesis 2:18) Man was incomplete and imperfect (not “good” with “good” here being used in exactly the same sense as God reviewing His work of creation and pronouncing it to be “good.”)
There was no adequate helper found for Adam amongst the other creatures. (Genesis 2:20) Adam saw things correctly, as they really were. He discerned the true nature of every creature, and named them correctly. This process led to the conviction that none of the other creatures was suitable as a companion for Adam.
The woman was created in such a way as to underscore and reveal her closeness to, and metaphysical sameness with, Adam. (Genesis 2:21,22). Adam, the perfect categorizer and namer of creatures, saw immediately what Eve represented when the Lord brought Eve to Adam and so he named her accordingly: “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man.” (Genesis 2:23) He acutely and intuitively named her with the feminine form of the Hebrew noun for “man” (“ishah”, the feminine form of “ish”, Hebrew for “man”). He saw immediately and correctly that she was the female version, and he the male version, of mankind―that they were equally part of the whole.
To have a woman as his helper, a man must leave his parents house, and cleave to his wife. Leaving and cleaving remain one of the most basic fundamental principles of successful marriage to this day―and always will be. (Genesis 2:24)
The closeness of the union is evidenced by the declaration that the man and the woman will be “one flesh”, and that they were both naked in each other’s presence without shame.
This is marriage as it was ordained and created to be, before the Fall, before sin corrupted it. Nevertheless, as we shall see in due time, despite the corruption of sin, the Lord reinstituted marriage and restored it. Moreover, He subsequently made emphatically clear that marriage holds a legitimacy and authority directly from God, such that man is expressly forbidden from separating a man and wife. They are understood to be joined together by God, and no human authority can legitimately overrule God’s appointment. (“What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” Matthew 19:6)
Marriage, however, is failing on every hand today. Many Athenians offer this as evidence that the teachings of Scripture are outmoded and archaic. Modern man needs new up-to-date social arrangements. In fact exactly the reverse is true. The widespread failure of marriage simply reflects the current ascendancy of unbelief in the Western World. It reflects that we are in a post-Christian world. It indicated declension and retreat, not an advance. The truth is that in general the Unbelieving Mind is incapable of sustaining the disciplines and callings represented in marriage. The contemporary failure of marriage is a failure of man to be properly human.
But, God is not mocked. If a nation or an age lifts up the hand of rebellion against God, a torrent of consequences flows down which result in the eventual collapse of a culture–usually from within. Every passing moment saps contemporary Athenian culture of its vitality; its ennervation is from within. The fever heat of summer will be followed by the long dark of winter, as sure as the sparks fly upwards.
We all know the psychological devastation that comes from the battleground that is the modern Athenian relationship between man and woman. Whether in marriage, or in semi-permanent “relationships”, whether in serial promiscuity or serial monogamy, whether in homosexuality or hermaphroditism, the hearts, minds, and bodies of men and women are being shredded and progressively dehumanised. Added to this fearsome concoction is the devastating impact upon children who are born into this maelstrom, where families are constantly breaking apart, reforming into different composites, with an endless succession of “step parents” or “whanau” posing to be family but all to often little more than an idiotic demonic aping of the truth.
This is what Athenian alternatives to marriage become—the great dehumanizer of our time. Under the temporary aegis of Athens, man becomes more animal like, and less image-of-God like, with every passing day. Governments hypocritically wring their hands and bemoan the rise in violence, abuse, drunkenness, drug addiction, neglect, butalisation, and the burgeoning breakdown of the social fabric. Hypocritically, because it is the fundamental axiom of Athenian unbelief, that each individual person is a law and standard unto himself―and it is this which has produced the chaos in the first place. The unbelief of Athens cannot therefore philosophically or ideologically sustain the institution of marriage. Athens has welcomed with open arms the modern “alternatives” of open marriages and the endless cycle of recycled partners as an avatar of enlightenment. Athens, in the end, would like to abolish the institution of marriage―yet is unwilling to accept the consequences. If you play with fire, any complaint about being burnt is not to be taken seriously. If you sow to the wind, you will reap the whirlwind. Don’t moan about it when it comes.
Of course, the downward spiral has yet got a way to run. Unbelief and its consequences take time to play out. But, in the past ten years we have entered the next, more insidious phase of the breakdown. As society reels from the social disorder and damage that comes from broken families, the State rears its ugly misshapen head and tries to respond to the crisis. Faced with the increasingly manifest social problems arising out of disfunctional families, the city of Athens does not, and will not, repent, and insist upon a return to the biblical mores. Rather it will always be true to its nature: It will set itself forth as the Great Redeemer, the Saviour, which will deliver society from the fruits of marital breakdown. It progressively arrogates to itself more and more power, more and more control over family life, over children, over schools; more and more interference―even to the point of specifying how families are to conduct themselves, with increasingly minute presecriptions, even down to hectoring everyone over what is to be eaten!―so that in the end, the State becomes the Uberparent.
We are in this phase of devolution now. This phase―the emergence of theState as Uberparent―will merely serve to exacerbate the damage and destruction many times over. It adds to the already volatile mix the ingredient of rights or entitlements. If things are not solved, because the State has taken upon itself both to correct and provide, then to the fire of victimhood arising out of marital breakdown is added the high octane accelerant of a belief that injustice is at the root of all problems. As the number of sociopaths grows, to their ingrained sense of victimhood, Athens encourages them to add a self-righteous, self justifying conviction that they have been treated unjustly “The government has not given me what I deserve by right, by reason of justice.” When individuals increasingly see themselves as being unjustly treated, as the State itself is regarded as traducing their legitimate demands and rights, law and order can break down, and break down rapidly. Substitutes to the State emerge, such as gangs, which have their own code, their own laws, and their own justice. The spectre of the warlord society looms.
Too far fetched for an enlightened society such as New Zealand? The structures of civilisation are skin deep. They can, and are, easily flayed away. Let me offer some illustrations of what is occurring now, and what it is likely to turn into.
Firstly, an extended quotation from historian, Dr Michael Bassett. This is the text of a speech, delivered early in 2008, in which he is contemplating the issues that would swirl around in the 2008 election.
The collapse of the two-parent household, and of self-reliance, has become a Kiwi tragedy. Radio and TV perpetually carry stories that any sensible person can see indicates that a sizeable chunk of Maori and Polynesian society is collapsing. Labour’s policies propel that collapse with a rocket in the tail. There are parts of Northland, South Auckland, Rotorua and Taupo that are now no-go areas at night. The Domestic Purposes Benefit (“DPB”) didn’t cause the breakdown of two parent households, but it gave it a permanent adrenalin rush. However, Labour resists debating the DPB like the devil shuns incense. . . .
We must remember that the DPB is an ancient article of feminist faith. But the depredations it has wrought are appalling. The perpetrators of child bashing, mothers driving with unrestrained children on their way home from the pub on benefit night, and the relentless over-production of fatherless children, can be traced directly to the DPB. It quickly became a state licence for tom-catting. Two-parent households have largely vanished from the underclass, ensuring that children stay in permanent poverty. They live desperate lives down there, yet politicians refuse to face one of the main causes of the continuing misery. For too many biological parents it’s not the children they want, only the money that goes with them. We shouldn’t be surprised that parents don’t read to them, or even talk to them. A recent Herald interview with several young Maori women in Taupo had them complaining “there’s nothing to do”. Most parents in the underclass have never taken their children out for a treat to the zoo, the speedway, a concert, or even fishing or tramping, or to the public park. Kids who tag, who commit petty crime, and increasingly use knives, have no idea of the opportunities open to them in the wider world. The young Taupo women I mentioned sat there, thumbing their cell phones, and waiting for their inevitable dead-end careers on the DPB. Too many parents don’t care about their kids – except on benefit day. Then it’s off to the pub.
Since 1999 it has become clear that Labour doesn’t believe in contracting out anything – except parental responsibility. This government funds an army of social workers while the problems get steadily worse. Now we are told that police will soon be attached to schools, acting of course in loco parentis. The notion that state-paid agencies can adequately substitute for parental responsibility must be one of the greatest fallacies of modern times. Yet Labour Party branches are full of representatives of the “caring industries”. Their livelihoods depend on a willingness to keep contracting out parental responsibility. Labour has locked these people into its electoral coalition at the expense of the wider welfare of society. A social work army dominates Labour these days. . . . Meantime the underclass that Labour has helped to create will continue to inflict untold damage, at huge expense, on the rest of us.
Dr Michael Bassett, “The Political Outlook in 2008: A speech given in Waiuku, 22 February 2008”, http://www.michaelbassett.co.nz/articleview.php
Note Bassett’s telling point: far too many biological parents today don’t want the children they have generated, only the money that goes with them. Dolling out money (rorted off its citizens) is the government’s initial way of dealing with the problem. When that fails, a veritable army of state paid agencies attempting to substitute for parental responsibility follows. How does the state justify this? By a fallacious appeal to justice. “It is right, fair, just that we give these disadvantaged people money.” What this means, is that modern Athens believes (and believes religiously) that these people are owed such help. Then, when that palably fails, the government intrudes directly as the Uberparent with its army of social workers structured around state funded help agencies. It has even got to the point where the police are to be stationed in schools. The state’s taking over of parental responsibilities is only limited by cost and resources―which are expanding at a rapid and unprecedented rate. If it could, the state would have a policeman living in every household. Let me introduce you to our new father. “Our Father which art in Wellington, Hallowed be Thy Name. May Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done . . .”
The Taupo syndrome, as described by Bassett, ends in almost total alientation from society, nursed by an underlying, brooding, volcanic anger. “I am a victim. I have been treated unjustly.” It is this social environment that breeds the world of the warlord. In New Zealand―nah! Really?
Take a good long look at the sociology of the gangs in New Zealand. They are incredibly powerful within their ghettoes and sub-cultures. Their women and children are literally enslaved―there is no other word for it. It is not tribalism, it is warlordism―and it is an inevitable fruit of the Athenian imitation of marriage.
Another variant of the same phenomenon is the rise of radical Islam in the UK. This is not Islam per se―that is merely its garb of the moment. It is the rise of the warlord, with the degradation of females, its suicide foot soldiers, its honour killings, its beating up of those competing with Muslims for jobs, its no-go areas for non-Muslims, its own justice system, its own banking system. This is the UK’s version of warlordism and parallels almost exactly the gangs in New Zealand. People are recruited to the warlords when they believe they have been afflicted wickedly and unjustly. And Athens consistently, inadvertently tells them that this is indeed the case. The warlord offers them hope of revenge, of payback, of a different justice. This fertile ground upon which the world of the warlord feeds has come about because of the Athenian version of marriage and family, with the whirlwind of devastating social consequences which come in its wake. In the end, Athens―the world of Unbelief―is the ultimate sociopath.
Marriage in Athens is at root nacissistic. It begins and ends in a dreadful pre-occupation with self. Marriages (or “relationships”, to use the modern parlance) in Athens, more often than not, are entered into with a motivation to gain something from the other party. When the other party stops serving me, and meeting my needs, “Sayonara, baby,” or more realistically, explosions of disappointment, frustration, anger, hatred, vitriol, substance abuse, and, increasingly, physical violence, then sayonara. And the children fearfully watch, and learn. Oh, how they learn!
In Jerusalem, marriage is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end. So far, Jerusalem agrees in a formal sense with Athens. Both cities enter marriage as a means to an end. For Athens, the end is narcissistic. For Jerusalem, the goal is to to serve God more effectively. This is clear in Genesis―and it makes the institution of marriage a fundamentally different prospect to the Athenian imitation.
Adam was under divine command―to go forth and subdue the earth―to rule over it in God’s Name, acting as His representative in the world. What an amazing honour! Hence the dignity of man above all other creatures. In order to do this effectively, it tuned out that Adam needed a helper that would be fit for the task. He could not succeed on his own. Thus, marriage was to make Adam more effective in serving God in the world, carrying out the responsibilities and duties of the Cultural Mandate. God declares, “I will make him a helper suitable for him.” (Genesis 2:18)
Thus, the end of marriage in Jerusalem is to advance God’s Kingdom and honour. The end of marriage is not a nacissistic meeting of my own needs―as in Athens. Of course, as we serve God and fulfill His purposes, so our needs are abundantly met. But marriage is first and foremost an institution to enable me to give to God. And when that is the case, the promise, “Give, and it will be given to you. They will pour into your lap a good measure–pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return,.” (Luke 6:38) comes true.
In the history of Athens, the institution of marriage has always been more stable when the particular society or culture believes in a greater goal towards which marriage works. So, in those ages when overarching goals are important in a particular Athenian society, such as making the nation great, children, provision for one’s old age, or maintaining a blood line of descendants, marriage tends to be a more stable and stronger institution. The ethic of “others” makes marriage much, much stronger. But these, while definitely better than modern nacissism, are a pale reflection of what marriage is supposed to be and achieve―which is captured only in Jerusalem.
Marriage is a core institution of the Kingdom of God. Through it, man becomes comprehensively equipped to succeed in going forth to multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. As men and women take on the duties and commitments of marriage with the objective of serving God more effectively, so they experience the deepest human fulfillment. But always in that order! Only then does marriage have a foundation which can last through the generations. Only then the ship sails with a fast moving tide.
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The Removal of Section 59 Shows State Religious Intolerance Alive and Well in New Zealand
This is my religion. Centuries ago, God appeared to Abraham, my father when he was in Mesopotamia. He commanded Abraham to leave his father’s land and move to a land which God would show to him. The Lord entered into a solemn covenant with Abraham and required that Abraham command his children and his household to keep the ways of the Lord so as to do righteousness and justice all their days. (Genesis 18:19)
Subsequently, my/our fathers went down to Egypt and were enslaved there for 400 years. But God did not forget His promises and His covenant. He sent Moses to Pharaoh, and through the power of God, Moses delivered Israel, the descendants of Abraham, out of Egyptian slavery. The Lord met with all Israel at Mt Sinai, and renewed His covenant with them there.
He gave them His holy law, the Ten Commandments. In particular, He commanded that fathers and mothers should be honoured. So important was this command, that it was the first command to be given with a promise—that His people would enjoy a long a prosperous life if they respected and honoured their parents. So, my family believes that our Lord set forth the family as a most precious institution, and He granted authority to parents, by commanding that parents should be respected. Our family law systems reflects this most important principle.
He further commanded that all parents must teach God’s laws and covenant to their children daily, in every aspect of their lives. (Deuteronomy 6: 4–9) But our fathers would not listen. They despised God and broke His covenant. Our Lord, however, did not forget. He loved Israel and promised that He would send an Anointed One, a Messiah to deliver us and our fathers. He also continued to strive with Israel. Often He reminded them of their duty to raise their children in a way which pleased Him: to train them, instruct them, discipline them diligently, to teach them to keep covenant, obey, and follow the Lord.
He commanded that as part of their duty, parents should not neglect the rod of physical correction. He promised that if the rod of discipline were used properly, it would drive foolishness far away from the hearts of children and they would grow up fearing God and loving men. (Proverbs 13:24; 22:15; 23:13,14) But our fathers would not listen and they rejected God’s commands, substituting instead the child-rearing practices of the nations around them. This led them to perpetrate acts of great cruelty and injustice upon their children, including killing them.
Many times our Lord disciplined and punished Israel, as an example of how a loving father should treat his children. But Israel would not listen. They forgot and despised the Lord. But the Lord did not forget them. In time He sent His Messiah, His only begotten Son, who would restore all things. He offered up His life as the atonement for all the sins of His covenant people. God accepted His sacrifice on behalf of His people, furnishing proof by raising Him from the dead, and seating the Christ at His right hand, as the King of all kings, and Lord of all lords. He commanded all men everywhere to repent and to believe in His Son, and to follow Him that all might know and experience the salvation of God.
So I have come to believe. And my Lord commands me, even as He instructed my father Abraham so long ago, to raise my children diligently and faithfully. I am bound in a holy covenant with the Lord and His Messiah, Jesus to train and instruct my children. Part of my duty to Him is to apply the rod of discipline where and when needed. I cannot neglect to do this, lest I break covenant, even as my fathers did. By the grace of God, I am determined not to do this.
This is my faith. This is my religion. I do not ask that others be required to believe and act as I do. I ask, however, that the Government leave me alone so that I and my family may keep covenant with God, and practice my faith. I ask you not to pass laws that would mean that it would be illegal to practice my beliefs.
For my part, I promise that my children will be raised to fear God and love all men. I promise to you that my children will not murder, they will not steal, nor fight, nor disturb the peace, nor do drugs, nor join gangs. I promise that my children will respect the property and possessions of others; that they will honour and pray for our government and judges and courts. I promise that our children will be raised to love and do good to all men. I promise that our children will lead quiet lives, they will work hard, and they will support themselves, and they will take care of the poor and the sick and the needy and the stranger and the immigrant.
I can promise this, because my Lord has made promises to me—that if I keep covenant with Him, and diligently instruct and discipline my children in His ways, He will keep covenant with me and my children will, in their turn, walk in His ways. This is my religion, my faith.
Religious freedom is a very fragile thing. In the public debate over this Bill to repeal Section 59, one of the promoters of this Bill has publicly ridiculed my faith and religion. Ms Sue Bradford, in reacting against my faith, and others who have spoken up, has said that my religion reminds her of “sexual bondage and discipline”. . . that it is based “in the Old Testament” and that “It’s a really terrible approach to take theologically, politically and socially.” (New Zealand Herald, August 25, 2005)
When the makers of law hold such views and publicly state that aspects of my faith are a “disgrace” and seek to inscribe those views in law, and thereby proscribe the practice of my faith, we are just one small step away from official, public religious persecution.
In the long run, that will be a far greater evil–regrettably not a new evil–but one that many carelessly assumed had long since been banished to a remote and primitive past. Athens is starting to take off its masks .
John Tertullian
>The State Has a Duty to Encourage Families to Impose Lawful Violence Upon Children
Below is an excerpt from a submission made to the Justice and Electoral Select Committee considering the removal of Section 59. As all New Zealand readers will know, Section 59 of the Crimes Act permitted parents to use reasonable force in disciplining and correcting their children.
The Parliament was deeply divided on the issue, with over 80 percent of the electorate polled indicating their opposition to the proposed change. At the last hour, a compromise was reached, which in effect meant there was a presumption of guilt if any parent exercised (light) physical discipline upon a child. Whether to prosecute or not was left to the discretion of the police.
We believe this piece of iniquitous legislation will do more to undermine the institution of the family in the community than any other in living memory, apart from the introduction of no-fault divorce, and the Domestic Purposes Benefit where the state pays for single mothers to bear and raise children.
In any event, the repeal shows the moral and spiritual bankruptcy of Athens at its best. It demonstrates that Athens has no doctrine of the family. It does not know what a family is. As one cynic observed, Athens believes a family is two lesbians and a budgerigar. But there is a more sinister dynamic at work. Underneath it all, Athens does not care if it does not have a doctrine of a family–whether in law or anything else. The bottom line for Athens is that the State is the real parent and the people are its children.
Cindy Kiro, the current Commissioner for Children in New Zealand vacuously and stupidly talks of “our children” reflecting her view that children belong to society and its institutionalised reflection–the state–not to parents. She probably has no idea of the implications of the phrase. Nevertheless her view is the standard Athenian line of propaganda.
The excerpt below reflects a more Christian view on the responsibilities and duties of parents towards children, and the duties and responsibilities of the state toward parents.
Children, Like All Citizens, Must be Subject to the Sanctions of Lawful Force
“The abuse of children is utterly detestable and those who abuse children should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
“However, like all citizens children are born and raised within a framework of law and order. Law and order is the fundamental bedrock of civilization—and children are fully entitled to enjoy its privileges and protections. Like all citizens, when children act contrary to the establishment of order, they must be subject to the sanctions of lawful force.
“Those who oppose the use of force upon children are either naïve or disingenuous in their view. We all live subject to force and the sanctions of the law–and children are no exception. We cannot, on the one hand, extol the vital necessity of law and order, without necessarily extolling the virtues of the force which provides sanctions for the law and which maintains, protects and defends order. The imposition of force, therefore, is essential to the well-being of the community and all who are in it.
“Moreover, the imposition of force is necessarily and inescapably violent, insofar as violence inevitably involves the imposition of force upon another. Granted there are two kinds of violence. One kind is unrestrained, vicious, uncontrolled. The other is ordered, structured, controlled, measured–but violence nonetheless.
“Society cannot exist without violence. It is inescapable. The only issue is what kind of violence we are going to have. Either society will practice controlled and structured violence through the administration of law and order, or it will have lawless violence with the attendant destruction of the fabric of society itself.
“Children are entitled to enjoy the privileges and protections of law and order. They must be subject to order, and to lawful force which is a vital constituent of the rule of law and the maintenance of order.
“Parents are responsible to promulgate family law and order. They also must be granted sanction by the criminal law to impose the necessary force to ensure that their family law is respected and their family order is maintained. Parents are the first “state”, school, and community that children experience. It is in the home that children must be taught respect for law and order in general, that to break family law will bring sanctions upon them, and that they have a responsibility to maintain family order.
“The range of sanctions within a particular family’s law system are naturally wide and varied between families. They will draw upon family history and culture, family religion, and traditional wisdom.
“The role of the state is self-evident. Firstly, the state must fulfill its responsibility to maintain law and order in the community and it must therefore sanction and apply lawful force to maintain law and order. Secondly, the state must respect the maintenance of law and order in families. It must, in this regard, respect the multi-cultural diversity within family law systems. And it must support parents in the establishment of their respective law and order systems within their families, and support parents in the imposition of lawful force to maintain family law and order systems.
“Thirdly, the responsibility of the state is to set boundaries upon all family law and order systems to ensure that parents do not engage in any criminal activity as they carry out their responsibilities to raise their children within the framework of law and order which is meaningful to that family.
“The proposal to repeal Section 59 of the Crimes Act represents a revolutionary change in the previously established law and order structures. It makes the imposition of force upon children subject to criminal charges of assault. Therefore, the Bill represents a fundamental change in the role of the state towards the community. Rather than the state fulfilling its duty to support family law and order systems and the sanctions of force which go with those systems, the Bill removes the state’s protection and support for reasonable family force by making it illegal.
“We note here that the promoters of the Bill claim that they are not intending to outlaw occasional smacking. However, in this they are either being deliberately disingenuous or extremely naïve. By removing the state’s support and protection for the imposition of reasonable force to sanction diverse family law systems, all force exercised within families will in principle be a form of assault. The intentions of the promoters of the Bill–if passed–will by then be totally irrelevant.
“The end result of the State abdicating its duty and responsibility to support and encourage lawful violence in the maintenance of law and order will be that lawless and unrestrained violence will increase–and increase markedly. This fruit will be fifteen to twenty years in the ripening: the reality that it will not happen tomorrow will be used by the facile as a justification for the change. But it will happen nonetheless–inevitably and remorselessly.”
No fault divorce and the DPB took thirty years to produce New Zealand’s underclass of welfare slaves. That problem is now intractable. There is no hope of change or transformation from within Athens itself. We expect that in time the repeal of Section 59 will exacerbate the rise of violent crime and expressions of random violence exponentially. The only real and realistic hope is to repudiate Athens and turn to Christ, the Saviour of the world.
“What harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? . . . . Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate, says the Lord and do not touch what is unclean. And I will welcome you and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.” (II Corinthians 6:15–18)
John Tertullian
>The Maori Party has publicly acknowledged that Maori are grossly over represented in criminal activity and violence. Now, party leader Tariana Turia has gone one step further–she has given us an explanation as to why this is so. It is because the Maori were taught to beat their children. And who taught them to do this? It was the missionaries.
So, Maori are lawless and violent today, and they beat their children today, because the missionaries taught them to do so. Before the missionaries came, says Mrs Turia, Maori loved their children, never beat them, and were indulgent toward them. They treasured them. So you can put the blame for Maori criminal behaviour right at the feet of the missionaries–and by implication–right at the feet of the Saviour they served–the Lord Jesus Christ.
I have a better theory. Maori never stopped being indulgent towards their children. They successfully retained that part of their pagan culture. So the kids, never corrected, trained, disciplined, or controlled grew up unconstrained. When they became adults they continued to live self-indulged, ill disciplined lives. When things did not go their way, when life did not indulge them the way it was when they were kids, they lashed out, became violent, beat up on their own kids, committed crimes, and acted totally irresponsibly.
The Proverb says, “train up a child in the way he would go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” If you indulge your tamiriki, when they grow up they will want to be continually indulged–and they will be locked into it. And that is a far better explanation for Maori violence and lawlessness.
Ironically, the only hope–the only hope–for Maori is to humble themselves before the God and Christ of the missionaries, repent and believe in Him as their Saviour, and turn away from their sins. Many Maori are now doing just that–for which we thank our King–and they are entering the new human race, created after the image of Christ, and being made more and more like Him every day.
The very ones which Mrs Turia, in her ignorance, blames and rejects are the ones (through their spiritual descendants) who can bring the power of salvation and transformation of life to her people. Today, if you would not harden your heart, is the day of salvation. May God be gracious and merciful and compassionate to all Maori.
contracelsum 