Collectivism v Democracy

“It is now often said that democracy will not tolerate 'capitalism.' If 'capitalism' means here a competitive system based on free disposal over private property, it is far more important to realise that only within this system is democracy possible. When it becomes dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroy itself.”

~ Friedrich Hayek from The Road to Serfdom, Ch. 5

"No wonder the Trump/Mamdani meeting went so well—these 2 are kindred spirits"

 

“'For all the hype of a conflict, [reports Axios] President Trump and New York City's next mayor, Zohran Mamdani, had a surprising bond when they met Friday in the Oval Office ...'

"This is no surprise ... Like Mamdani, Trump is fundamentally a collectivist. Collectivism is the foundation of Socialism, whether of the Fascist or Communist variety.

"It’s instructive that, after his meeting with Trump ... Mamdani reiterated his belief that Trump is a Fascist. Indeed, as Axios reported ... 'For a few minutes, Mamdani — whom Trump had called a communist — and Trump, whom Mamdani had called a fascist, gave a glimpse of how they might find common ground . . .' Common ground, indeed!

"Whether or not Trump is a full-blown Fascist or Mamdani is a full-blown Communist, the fact remains that Fascism and Communism are, as the great champion of The Enlightenment Steven Pinker has observed, 'fraternal twins.' No wonder the meeting went so well—these 2 are kindred spirits ..."

~ Mike LaFerrara from his post 'On the Trump/Mamdani 'Lovefest''

Fascism. What is it?

"What is fascism, and what place does it occupy in political philosophy? There is more to that question than the standard identification with the extreme right, as echoed by the Encyclopedia Britannica:

'Although fascist parties and movements differed significantly from one another, they had many characteristics in common, including extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: 'people’s community'), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation.'

"This characterisation doesn’t fit well on the conventional left-right axis of the political spectrum. For one thing, the mainstream left also entertains communitarian beliefs and favors “the good of the nation” against individual interests. Its devotion to democracy and liberalism, at least in the classical sense, is rather doubtful. Apart from its populist variant, the mainstream left does favor a hierarchy between elected officials and expert bureaucrats on the one side, and the populace on the other side. Finally, if we look at socialism à la Maduro or at communism, the practical difference with fascism wears thin. The favoured political constituencies of the two regimes differ but often overlap. For example, the common people easily rally behind strongmen of either the extreme left or the extreme right, and even move from one side to the other over time.'

The kinship between the extreme right and the extreme left suggests that the conventional axis left-right is not a satisfactory model. The left and the right share more than is apparent. ...

"[A]sk Benito Mussolini himself, the founder of fascism ... [who] explained :

'Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State. … It is opposed to classical Liberalism ... When one says liberalism, one says the individual; when one says Fascism, one says the State.' ...

"[Both] fascism and communism—and, to a different extent, [both] the right and the left —... are collectivist and opposed to the individualism of classical liberalism and libertarianism.

"This distinction between collective and individual choices seems to be the main line of fracture in modern ideologies."

~ Pierre Lemieux from his post 'Fascism, the Right, and the Left'

"If men want to oppose war..."

"If men want to oppose war, it is statism that they must oppose. So long as they hold the tribal notion that the individual is sacrificial fodder for the collective, that some men have the right to rule others by force, and that some (any) alleged 'good' can justify it—there can be no peace within a nation and no peace among nations.”

~ Ayn Rand, from her article 'The Roots of War'

"...the threat today’s Republican party poses to so much of what is unique and great about America."

"Vice President ... JD Vance ... [and his advisers] belong to an elite coterie of illiberal Christian conservatives animated by an attitude reminiscent of what historian Fritz Stern once called the 'politics of cultural despair' ... [harking back to] a movement of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century intellectuals who shared a loathing of liberalism rooted in personal frustration. 'They attacked liberalism because it seemed to them the principal premise of modern society; everything they dreaded seemed to spring from it. . . . their one desire was for a new faith, a new community of believers, a world with fixed standards and no doubts.' ...

"The worldview many of Vance’s muses hold up as the alternative to liberalism is self-avowedly Roman Catholic. Catholicism offers anti-liberal intellectuals a way to anchor their dislike of the modern world in something bigger, a tradition that promises timeless truths and solutions to every social problem. Yet their Catholicism is much smaller than the tradition it rests on because of the way they have politicised it: Their use of the Catholic tradition is motivated by their animus against liberalism and therefore selective.

"One sees this in the barely disguised admiration some of them have for twentieth-century Catholic 'corporatism,' what others call clerical fascism. ...

"The high-water mark for Catholic corporatism came in the wake of the 1931 papal encyclical Quadragesimo anno. Speaking to the social question, Pope Pius XI explicitly embraced the idea of 'corporations' [a system drawing inspiration from mediaeval guilds in which the whole of society would be organised into distinct corporations arising from common interests]. 

"In a controversial set of paragraphs, he even appeared to approve of Italian fascism. Years later, the primary ghostwriter of Quadragesimo anno insisted the encyclical had been misread. Be that as it may, the encyclical was widely understood in its time as endorsing clerical fascism. In the words of one historian, 'Virtually every Fascist revolution of the next decade was to fly the flag of Quadragesimo anno and its corporative State.' ...

"[C]orporatist regimes were not merely experimenting with policy proposals that others might copy; they were engaged in a radical project of social transformation. The corporatist organisation they envisioned aimed to embrace every aspect of society and define life’s meaning. “In the corporation,” Messner wrote, “the individual discovers himself placed in a community whose reality he experiences, which embraces him in the day to day life of his vocation, but which also shapes the entire surroundings of his life, because it determines an area of life and cultural values of a special kind.”

"One needn’t engage in endless debates about the nature of fascism to recognise [this] as a political vision that treated individuals as parts of a societal collective, assigned the state responsibility for directing the pursuit of happiness, and had the audacity to equate its repressive regulation of people’s lives with human flourishing. That such a vision is deeply inimical to America’s Constitutional tradition should be self-evident to every honest legal scholar.

"Which brings us back to JD Vance. One cannot tell the extent to which he is an unprincipled opportunist, a true believer, or just a very online guy. What we do know, however, is that he moves among a small circle of intellectuals who toy with dangerous, deeply un-American ideas. Vance’s remark that the United States is currently in a 'late republican period' in need of a Caesar may be an indication that he’s studied De bello civili—but it’s much more likely he’s reading figures from the conservative revolution like Carl Schmitt and Oswald Spengler who talked about how Germany needed a Caesar to deliver it from parliamentary democracy. Or, likelier still, he’s reading others who have imbibed their ideas.

"That ideas like these, and the people who promote them, have influence with a man who might be placed a heartbeat from the presidency is one more piece of evidence, if more were needed, of the threat today’s Republican party poses to so much of what is unique and great about America."

~ H.David Baer from his article 'The Influence of Austrofascism on JD Vance'

"If you have a set of views that you can’t question, and a group of friends who’ll disown you if you do, you’re not a political activist – you’re in a cult."

Pic from The Spectator

"I have in the past admired twentysomethings for their interest in politics at an age when I was mostly clueless. I still do. But if you have a set of views that you can’t question, and a group of friends who’ll disown you if you do, you’re not a political activist – you’re in a cult."

~ Mary Wakefield, from her post 'No one will change their mind about Hamas'

"It is fear that drives them to seek the warmth, the protection, the 'safety' of a herd.
    "When they speak of merging their selves into a 'greater whole,' it is their fear that they hope to drown in the undemanding waves of unfastidious human bodies. And what they hope to fish out of that pool is the momentary illusion of an unearned personal significance."

~ Ayn Rand, from her essay 'Apollo and Dionysus' [hat tip Hilton H.]

The tribalism of the new Right contrarians

"The new Right’s absurd positions [on Ukraine, on Putin, on Milei, on vaccines, on immigration, you name it] cannot be explained by their adherence to any coherent ideology, but only by their tribal view of the world.
    "To get a better grip on how these people think, we need to understand what the new Right is. By 'the new Right' I mean a loose network that emerged in the last decade and is active in the culture wars. It includes social and alternative media influencers (like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Jack Posobiec) and politicians (like Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy). And it includes their numerous followers and the segment of Donald Trump supporters who are fanatical. Uniting this loose network is their opposition to both the liberal-leftist ideology and what they see as establishment conservatism. The new Right should not be understood as a coherent political ideology, but as a political tribe.
    "There are two ways a tribalist makes up his mind on an issue. The first is by following the line of his group. This is, after all, the essence of tribalism: making sense of one’s self, of others, and of the world through the prism of the group. These days though, we can see another kind of tribalist who follows another guide: first he observes what the other group, the enemy tribe, stands for, and then he supports the opposite position. Whatever the enemy believes and supports, this is the bad; whatever they oppose, the good. Thus, the enemy, the other, becomes the standard of true and false, the yardstick of right and wrong. This mode of thinking is still tribalism: the standard of truth is still other people and opposition to what they believe. ...
    "[Why do m]any who think that the election of 2020 was rigged also tend to believe that the vaccines made young people 'drop like flies'? ... because they formed their views on those topics [by opposing the consensus of the liberals/progressives/globalists,” i.e. the 'current thing.' .... Why do new Right culture warriors oppose the struggle of a nation to maintain its freedom against an aggressor? Because Ukraine and Zelensky also became 'the current thing.' ...

I will call this subcategory of tribalism contrarianism. Interestingly, the contrarian thinks he is the opposite of a tribalist. He makes fun of the masses, calling them victims of groupthink or 'NPCs' (the Non-Player Characters of video games who lack agency). In the contrarian’s mind, he is above any such brainwashing and claims to do 'his own research.' Yet if he simply adjusts his thinking about all major topics by picking whatever is the opposite of the dominant opinion, he’s not really thinking. ...
    "Understanding the character of the new Right contrarians should give us insight into how to oppose their tribalism and nihilism. They are collectivists, in thought and in action. Their existential compass is the group. The opposite of collectivism is individualism, and the opposite of tribalism is independent thinking — taking the responsibility to make sense of the world on one’s own. Independent thinking is difficult, and in no way infallible. Yet, it is our only navigating instrument towards the truth. There is no substitute for the responsibility to think. ...

"That the tribalists of the new Right promise to make America great again is an outrageous farce. The people who made America great were the opposite of tribalists. They had the self-esteem to see the world through their own judgment and to put no tribal allegiance or dogma above it. It can only be independent thinkers that can appreciate and pursue the positive values that have made America a country worth loving and fighting for: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
    "To be an American patriot, one must first reject tribalism."

~ Nikos Sotirakopoulos, from his post 'Contrarians of the New Right'

'Selfishness' without a self

 

"It’s what I couldn’t understand about people for a long time. They have no self. They live within others. They live second-hand. ...
    "[T]oo selfish? In what act or thought of [theirs] has there ever been a self? ...  [Their] aim in life? Greatness — in other people’s eyes. Fame, admiration, envy — all that which comes from others. ... [They do]n’t want to be great, but to be thought great. ... There’s your actual selflessness. ... But everybody calls [that] selfish. . . .

    “Isn’t that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he’s honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he’s great in the eyes of others. The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison. . . . They’re second-handers. . . .
    “They have no concern for facts, ideas, work. They’re concerned only with people. They don’t ask: ‘Is this true?’ They ask: ‘Is this what others think is true?’ ...
    "Their reality is not within them, but somewhere in that space which divides one human body from another. Not an entity, but a relation — anchored to nothing. That’s the emptiness I couldn’t understand in people. That’s what stopped me whenever I faced a committee. Men without an ego. Opinion without a rational process. Motion without brakes or motor. Power without responsibility."

~ Ayn Rand, the character Howard Roark speaking, from her novel The Fountainhead — excerpted as part of 'The Nature of the Second-Hander' in her book For the New Intellectual

"Their wealth is not at the expense of others – it is by providing things of value"

"One-hundred years ago almost all the wealthy inherited their wealth. Today most billionaires become one through being entrepreneurs. They create something of value. ...
    "I don’t begrudge [the Mowbray family] that they are worth $20 billion. Their wealth is not at the expense of others – it is by providing things of value.
    "The left parties want to introduce an asset or wealth tax on anyone who gets too successful. Not content with taxing income, they want to redistribute assets also. But what do you think will happen if they ever succeed in NZ? I can tell you what – the Mowbrays will probably relocate somewhere and take all the income tax, company tax etc. they pay with them."

~ David Farrar, from his post 'A Kiwi success story'

UPDATE: Isn't it funny what massive success brings out of the woodwork. David Farrar's praise above for the Mowbray's non-sacrificial entrepreneurial success is in stark contrast to an envy-ridden screed about their success by failed former Labour minister Michael Wood, who skips quickly from suggesting their success shows New Zealand is "a little out of balance" [?] to calling for the government to tax the bastards.

Thomas Cranmer takes the oily former minister to task, making an excellent recommendation to remedy his thinking:

Mr Wood, of course, is a former Labour MP and Cabinet Minister who lost his seat – a relatively safe Labour one at that. Now as a union organiser – what a surprise – he carries on the collectivist messaging that characterises the Left. To understand the fundamental importance of individual effort and, as Ayn Rand put it "to show how desperately the world needs prime movers and how viciously it treats them" and "what happens to the world without them" Mr Wood might like to try reading Atlas Shrugged.
    I applaud the Mowbrays. I admire their initiative. I extol their entrepreneurship. I could not take the business risks that they obviously have to get to the position that they now are in. But that is not common for New Zealand nor is it common for the media to express unqualified praise for those who have done well. There is always a “Good on them, but….” And it is the “but” that evidences the Groupthink of the tall poppy syndrome which is an aspect of New Zealand culture that we could well do without and that Atlas Shrugged condemns.

 Damned right.

MILEI EXPLAINS: 21 Quotes to explain prosperity and economic freedom

Why is Argentina leading the world? Because, says its president, "while in the rest of the world the ideas of freedom are under siege, in Argentina there is a renewed faith in them.... " Here in twenty-one quotes (courtesy of @MileiExpains) Argentine president Javier Milei explains how the West got rich — and why you should care...

"The West is in danger.
    "It is in danger because its leaders long ago moved away from the ideas of freedom. Ideas that made the West the most important civilisational achievement in the history of mankind. And instead of defending the ideas that generated the prosperity that everyone here enjoys, they listen to siren songs that lead inexorably to socialism, and consequently to poverty."

"In some sense, we Argentines are prophets of an apocalyptic future, which we have already lived. All those discussions of today, based on supposedly well thought out desires of wanting to help our fellow man, based on an erroneous idea about the nature and function of the State, sustained by economic theories that have been long refuted by data and empirical evidence, we Argentines lived them 100 years ago, and unfortunately applying those ideas have led us to ruin."

"Since the 19th century, and as a result of the industrial revolution, the GDP per capita not only increased but did so exponentially. In the last 150 years it multiplied by 15, generating an explosion of wealth that lifted 90 percent of the world's population out of poverty, reaching the point that by the year 2020 only 5 percent of the global population lived in extreme poverty."

"Far from being the cause of our problems, free enterprise capitalism as an economic system is the best tool we as a species have known to end hunger, poverty, and extreme poverty across the globe."

"While the success of capitalism is easy to demonstrate, what is not so accessible to many is the counterfactual, where the systematic choice of a collectivist model leads. As I said before, perhaps the best example is the Argentinean example. Our entire history is a testimony of what can happen when the model of freedom is abandoned and replaced by collectivist experiments."

"Since 1949 the monetary base in the United States has multiplied 16 times, while in Argentina the figure multiplied the astronomical number of 25,000 trillions times. Yeah, it is a real number. I'm not making it up.
    "I repeat it, the monetary base expanded 25,000 trillion times. That is the level of disaster that politicians can produce if they are allowed to deviate from the basic principles of the market economy."

"Those who lead the West have forgotten an elementary truth, and it is the moral responsibility of those of us who still remember it to defend and declaim it. And that inescapable truth is that economic freedom, in pursuit of individual interest, produces collective benefits, and therefore the entrepreneur who risks capital in pursuit of profit is a social benefactor."

"Those who lead the major nations and organisations in the West do not give enough credit to this idea and look at the economy from a theoretical framework that believes the market is imperfect, that it produces failures, and that it requires state intervention to perfect it. The problem with this conception is that it justifies interventions that bring more problems than benefits and undermine economic growth."

"The market, presupposing free competition and a system of free prices with clear signals, constitutes a mechanism for the extraction and transmission of information in which the greater the freedom the better is the performance. In other words, the free market is a process of discovery in which the capitalist finds, on the fly, the right course of action in a constant search for profit, and that translates into offering goods of better quality at the best prices."

"Those who insist with interventionism not only impede the virtuous functioning of the market, but on top of that they congratulate themselves and exchange medals of social responsibility in pompous ceremonies, while they end up promoting an agenda of values that opens the door little by little to socialism and consequently to misery."

"I do believe that the private sector has a very clear mandate of social responsibility, but it has nothing to do with being moralistic or guilty. The true social responsibility of the entrepreneur is a natural effect of the free functioning of his own economic activity. The mandate is to produce goods and services of better quality at the best price, linked to the maximisation of profits. The social responsibility of the entrepreneur is to make money, and he can only do that by serving his fellow man with better quality goods at a better price."

"Entrepreneurs are social benefactors, far from the criticisms usually made of them by spendthrift and profligate politicians."

"Since free markets have existed we have crossed frontier after frontier. We have lifted the whole world out of poverty in 250 years. We have put men on the moon and now we are looking at Mars. And we have done it because of the ambition, creativity and optimism of men like you who partner with each other in pursuit of your happiness."

"We must not lose faith in that primal ambition that we humans have as our guide. We are a species of explorers, of creators, of inventors, not bureaucrats. And it is the adventurous entrepreneur, not the desk bureaucrat, the kind of man who embodies in the present this timeless quality of the human spirit."

"I look at Argentina with all the changes we are undertaking and I see that we are going in the opposite direction that the rest of the world, because while in the rest of the world the ideas of freedom are under siege, in Argentina there is a renewed faith in them."

"While the West turns towards control and imposition, Argentina turns towards trusting its citizens in the exercise of their freedom. While the West turns towards deficit, bureaucracy and the intrusive State, Argentina turns towards austerity, towards savings, and to retire the State from the economic activity. While the West turns towards economic shamanism and unsustainable formats of heterodoxy that endanger the future of all, Argentina returns to the path of reason, to the ideas of common sense."

"Our goal is to give back to the Argentines every peso we save, first by eliminating inflation and then, in the future, by reducing taxes as a consequence of economic growth. And we have as our north, to dismantle the tangle of regulations that Argentina has become, in order to free economic activity and unleash its productive force."

"For us, the only task of the State is to protect the life, liberty and property of Argentines, so that each one can be the architect of his own destiny. This is our vision. It is a vision similar to the one held by all the prosperous countries of the West in the great moments of their history. The task of the State is not to put invented money in people's pockets, but to ensure the macroeconomic and legal conditions so that the private sector can develop on its own."

"I want to conclude these words by inviting everyone here, who are the heroes of the history of the progress of humanity... If you believe as I do in the superiority of free enterprise capitalism. If you believe as I do that the West is walking to a slow but sure retreat. If you believe as I do that merit, ambition, freedom and innovation and optimism are essential values of the human species that should be rewarded. I would like to invite you to bet on Argentina, to help me, you who are human progress personified, to make Argentina the new Rome of the 21st century."

"It is you who can prove to the bureaucrats of the world that they are destroying the West, that the ideas of freedom are the only way to achieve prosperity."

"Let us once again embrace the ideas of freedom with pride, let us be proud to be entrepreneurs, proud to be businessmen, because they are the true social benefactors, they are the ones who create wealth, they are the ones who have taken the world out of misery. To finish, I also ask you to accompany us, the Argentines, in this rebirth of the West."

"Fascism and communism are not two opposites, but two rival gangs fighting over the same territory"

                                     

"It is obvious what the fraudulent issue of fascism versus communism accomplishes: it sets up, as opposites, two variants of the same political system; it eliminates the possibility of considering capitalism; it switches the choice of 'Freedom or dictatorship?' into 'Which kind of dictatorship?' — thus establishing dictatorship as an inevitable fact and offering only a choice of rulers. The choice — according to the proponents of that fraud — is: a dictatorship of the rich (fascism) or a dictatorship of the poor (communism).
       "That fraud collapsed in the 1940s, in the aftermath of World War II. It is too obvious, too easily demonstrable that fascism and communism are not two opposites, but two rival gangs fighting over the same territory — that both are variants of statism, based on the collectivist principle that man is the rightless slave of the state — that both are socialistic, in theory, in practice, and in the explicit statements of their leaders — that under both systems, the poor are enslaved and the rich are expropriated in favour of a ruling clique — that fascism is not the product of the political 'right,' but of the 'left' — that the basic issue is not 'rich versus poor,' but man versus the state, or: individual rights versus totalitarian government — which means: capitalism versus socialism."

~ Ayn Rand, from her article '“Extremism,” or The Art of Smearing' [hat tip Δημήτριος Τσίκας]

 

"...by definition, good people don't want to control other people's lives.”

“Some leftists believe that the communist world would work if 'good people' were in control. But they don't realise that, by definition, good people don't want to control other people's lives.”

~ attrib. Ludwig von Mises [hat tip Stephen Hicks]

March being Women’s History Month, it's a good time to recall how Rose Wilder Lane’s experience with the reality of Russian socialism, as a visitor there with the Red Cross, brought many, like her, to see the paramount importance of freedom.  Rose later wrote that she “came out of the Soviet Union no longer a communist.” She began to realise America enjoyed a degree of freedom no other nation held. “Like all Americans, I took for granted the individual liberty to which I had been born. It seemed as necessary and as inevitable as the air I breathed; it seemed the natural element in which human beings lived.” For Rose, the Soviet Union was “not an extension of human freedom, but the establishment of tyranny on a new, widely extended and deeper base.” Gary Galles give more of the story in this guest post.

The Moment Rose Wilder Lane’s Faith in Communism Was Pierced

by Gary Galles

March is Women’s History Month. Among the women who have been remembered and honoured, however, one has clearly not received enough attention: Rose Wilder Lane (daughter of 'Little House on the Prairy' creator Laura Ingalls Wilder).

Among the past century’s most ardent proponents of liberty, she developed the inseparable connection between life and liberty and the importance of individuals understanding the implications of their freedom. In her honour, especially given the current lack of serious attention to protecting our liberties in current American politics, revisiting her book Give Me Liberty (1936), which traces her evolution from believing in communism to devotion to liberty, seems particularly appropriate. The book has surprisingly clear implications for today.

In 1919 I was a communist.

From this point of view… the Profit System causes the injustice, the inequality, we see. We must eliminate profit; that is to say, we must eliminate the Capitalist. We will take his current profits, distribute his accumulated wealth, and ourselves administer his former affairs…When the Capitalist is gone, who will manage production? The State… It was at this point that the first doubt pierced my Communist faith.

This economic revolution concentrated economic power in the hands of the State… so that the lives, the livelihoods, of common men were once more subject to dictators… Every advance toward personal liberty which had been gained…was lost by the collectivist economic reaction.

Representative government cannot express the will of the mass of the people…the population of a country is a multitude of diverse human beings with an infinite variety of purposes and desires and fluctuating wills…Any government of multitudes of men, anywhere, at any time, must be a man, or few men, in power.

Centralised economic control over multitudes of human beings…must become such minute and rigorous control of details of individual life as no people will accept without compulsion.

What I saw was not an extension of human freedom, but the establishment of tyranny on a new, widely extended and deeper base.

The Soviet government exists to do good to its people, whether they like it or not… To that end they have suppressed personal freedom; freedom of movement, of choice of work, freedom of self-expression in ways of life, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience.

[Coordinating] vast multitudes of human beings are activities so intricately inter-related and inter-dependent that efficient control of any part of them demands control of the whole.

The Communist hope of economic equality… rests … on the death of all men and women who are individuals.

I came out of the Soviet Union no longer a communist, because I believed in personal freedom…I [saw] an essentially medieval, planned and controlled economic order was taking over the fruits of the industrial revolution while destroying its root, the freedom of the individual.

I understood at last that every human being is free; that I am endowed by the Creator with inalienable liberty as I am endowed with life; that my freedom is inseparable from my life, since freedom is the individual’s self-controlling nature.

I hold the truth to be self-evident, that all men are endowed by the Creator with inalienable liberty, with individual self-control and responsibility…The extent to which this natural liberty can be exercised depends upon the amount of external coercion imposed upon the individual.

The men who met in Philadelphia to form a government believed that all men are born free. They founded this government on the principle: All power to the individual…The intent was actually to give the governing power to each common man equally…Common men were to govern themselves…Power was diminished to an irreducible minimum…Never before had the multitudes of men been set free to do as they pleased.

Individualism. In less than a century, it created our America.

American wealth is innumerable streams of power…flowing through the mechanisms that produce the vast quantities of goods consumed by the multitudes, and the men who are called the owners can hardly be said even to control the wealth that stands recorded as theirs, for…in this American chaos business and industry were compelled to serve those desires or perish.

There is no system here…But if this chaos were replaced by a system…functioning for the sole purpose of serving the public good, these men must be replaced by a bureaucracy…controlling in detail, and according to a plan devised by men possessing centralised economic power, all the processes.

[America’s] brief experiment in individualism has not only created great wealth and an unimaginable multiplication of forms of wealth in goods and services, but it has also distributed these forms of wealth to an unprecedented and elsewhere unequalled degree.

As I read Lane’s words, a strong sense that “this is as much about today as it is about when she wrote” began to grow in me. But as I kept reading, I was floored by just how true that was.

I read … that less than 10 percent of our population own more than 90 percent of the wealth. This alarmed me in 1893 … But it seems to me even more alarming that many American minds accept this statement as true upon no better proof than that they have read it, and from it conclude, first, that “something must be done,” and, second, that the proper thing to do is to take ownership away from individuals and have property administered by The State; which means, by autocratic rulers giving orders through an enormous bureaucracy.

There is nothing new in planned and controlled economy. Human beings have lived under various forms … for six thousand years. The new thing is … individualism … the principle that created this country and has, in fact, brought the greatest good to the greatest number.

Can individualism … stand against the determined attack of [those] organised, controlled, and fanatically sure that a strong man in power can give a people better lives than they can create for themselves?

Will [we] defend the Constitutional law that divides, restricts, limits and weakens political-police power, and thus protects every citizen’s personal freedom, his human rights, his exercise of those rights in a free, productive, capitalist economy and a free society? Or … suppressing individual liberty, sacrificing human rights to an imagined “common good,” and substituting for civil laws the edicts, or “directives,” once accurately called tyranny and now called administrative law? This is the choice that every American must make … the present situation puts it before us and requires a decision.

In 1933 a group of sincere and ardent collectivists seized control of the Democratic Party, used it as a means of grasping Federal power, and … began to make America over. The Democratic Party is now a political mechanism having a genuine political principle: national socialism.

Reactionary pseudo-thinkers shifted American thought into reverse … They called it “liberal” to suppress liberty; “progressive” to stop the free initiative that is the source of all human progress; “economic freedom,” to obstruct all freedom, and “economic equality” to make men slaves … We never heard that these United States are a political structure unique in all history, built upon … the fact that individual persons are naturally free, self-controlling and responsible.

These United States stand for a political principle that must conquer and change the whole world, because it is true.

Today, Federal administrative agencies have nearly destroyed those divisions of the political power which alone protect the property, liberty and lives of American citizens … because a state that dictates men’s action in producing and distributing goods must have undivided and absolute power.

Leading statesmen assume that … suppression of liberty is good for mankind, and that these new forms of an old tyranny are here to stay.

Free thought, free speech, free action, and freehold property are the source of the modern world. It cannot exist without them. Its existence depends upon abolishing these reactionary state controls and destroying the socialist State.

The task before Americans is to end these police-controls of peaceful, productive American citizens, to repeal all the reactionary legislation and … executive orders … to abolish the Federal corporations, departments, bureaus and agencies that dictate and enforce these State controls … to require men in public office to recognise again every American’s natural right as a free person.

No politician, yet, has asked American voters to give him the power to strip any State of the powers it has usurped from its citizens, nor to strip the Federal Government of the powers it has usurped from the States; to restore the rights of the citizens, the rights and powers of the States … nor to add …further restrictions that will adequately protect the property, liberty and lives of persons …  and make the United States again the world-champion of human rights and the leader of the world-liberating revolution.

Rose Wilder Lane’s experience with the reality of Russian socialism, expressed insightfully, has brought many to see the paramount importance of freedom (or more often, the tragedy of its absence) in human lives. What we can learn from her Give Me Liberty is also reinforced in her 1943 companion book The Discovery of Freedom. She offers us lessons which need re-learning in each generation, if liberty is to be defended from the erosion that is not just ongoing but accelerating now. And it is very hard to miss just how appropriate her words still are for the political situation Americans face now. That is why it is useful to remember what she wrote in her autobiographical sketch,

I am now a fundamentalist American; give me time and I will tell you why individualism, laissez-faire and … capitalism offer the best opportunities for the development of the human spirit. Also I will tell you why the relative freedom of human spirit is better — and more productive, even in material ways — than … any other rigidity organised for material ends.

* * * * * 

Dr. Gary Galles is a Professor of Economics at Pepperdine University, California. His research focuses on public finance, public choice, the theory of the firm, the organisation of industry and the role of liberty including the views of many classical liberals and America’s founders­. His books include Pathways to Policy Failure; Faulty Premises, Faulty Policies; Apostle of Peace; and Lines of Liberty.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article. 

China's history "presents some interesting and broader lessons for us, even in New Zealand"

"Frank Dikotter ... has written a number of books on the modern history of China. Of particular note are three titles which form 'The People’s Trilogy' and which cover the history of China under Mao Zedong. ...

    "Dikotter’s books present some interesting and broader lessons for us, even in New Zealand. The lessons are considerable but as I read the following matters occurred to me.
    "Communist rule thrives in an authoritarian atmosphere where a single line of thought and expression prevails. There is no room for contrary opinions. There is no tolerance of dissent. ...
    "Communist rule cannot tolerate any expression of individualism. Everything and everyone must be subordinated to the interests of the State. Individual initiative, individual betterment, individual ambition cannot be tolerated. Individual economic improvement is unacceptable. ...
    "The sort of levelling that is anticipated by a wealth tax – proposed by the Greens and by some element of the Labour Party - is typical of the type of levelling that took place in Mao’s China. The motives and the methods may be different as may be the context within a supposedly democratic environment — but the outcome is the same — the subordination of the individual to the interests of the State.
    "Finally there is the casual attitude towards human life — indeed the lives of the citizens which, under a civilised State, the State is duty bound to preserve and protect. Lives became numbers to the Communist bureaucrats and those numbers became quotas for the widely scattered cadres who not only tried to fulfil but at times endeavoured to exceed the death quotas dictated from Beijing. The message is clear. Under Communism even the life of the citizen is subordinated to the State.
    "These are but three of the lessons that come out of Dikotter’s study. Clearly he is no friend of Mao or his methods and how could he be. Indeed, how could anyone be."

~ David Harvey, from his post 'The Tragedy of Liberation'

Javier Milei to the WEF: "You're all a bunch of parasites -- long live freedom, dammit!"

 

Javier Milei's speech overnight (translated) to Klaus Schwab's World Economic Forum. 

"This is actually wild to listen to. It sounds like a libertarian

podcast but its the main stage at the bloody WEF!"

NB: Presentation starts at 4:00, speech starts at 5:45

Argentine president Javier Milei went to the WEF's event in Davos, and told them they are a bunch of parasites.

And they deserved it.

But he had something infinitely more important to say: 

that the western world is in danger, and it's in danger because those who are supposed to defend the values of the west are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism, and thereby to poverty....

Leaders of the western world have abandoned the model of freedom ... We're here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world .... the key to prosperity is freedom.

Yesterday, Milei said he wanted "to plant the ideas of freedom in a forum that is contaminated by the 2030 socialist agenda." Today, he did just that — and more.

A fuller summary below of his speech, courtesy of @MileiExplains --  but first, a quick overview:

Today I am here to tell you that the western world is in danger, and it's in danger because those who are supposed to defend the values of the west are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism, and thereby to poverty.

Unfortunately, in recent decades, motivated by some well meaning individuals willing to help others, and others motivated by the desire to belong to a privileged class, the main leaders of the western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism.

"We are here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world, rather they are the root cause.

The problem with neoclassical (economists) is the model they love so much does not match reality, so they attribute their own mistakes to the supposed market failure, rather than reviewing the premises of their model.

On the pretext of the supposed market failures, regulations are introduced, which only create distortions in the price system, preventing economic calculation, and therefore, also prevent savings, investment, and growth.

Not even supposedly libertarian economists understand what the market is, because if they did understand it, they would quickly see that it's impossible for something alone the lines of market failure to exist.

Talking about market failure is an oxymoron, there are no market failures, if transaction are voluntary the only context where it can be a market failure is coercion, and the only one that is able to coerce is the state.

Faced with the theoretical demonstration that state intervention is harmful, and the empirical evidence that it has failed, the solution proposed by the collectivists is not greater freedom but rather greater regulation. Greater regulation which creates a downwards spiral until we are all poor, and the life of all of us depend on a bureaucrat sitting somewhere in a luxury office.

Whenever you want to correct a supposed market failure, inexorably, as a result of not knowing what the market is, or as a result of having fallen in love with a failed model, you are opening up the doors to socialism and condemning people to poverty.

Given the dismal failure of collectivist models, and the undeniable advances in the free world, socialists were lead to change their agenda. They left behind the class struggle based on the economic system, and replaced it with other supposed social conflicts, which are just as harmful to life as a community, and to economic growth.

Today's states don't need to directly control the means of production to control every aspect of the life of individuals. With tools like printing money, debt, subsidies, control of the interest rate, price controls, and regulations to correct the so called market failures, they can control the lives and fates of millions of individuals.

They say that capitalism is evil because it's individualistic and that collectivism is good because it's altruistic, of course with the money of others.

 Those who promote social justice, they advocate the idea that the whole economy is a pie that can be shared in better ways, but that pie is not a fixed given, it's wealth that get generated in what Israel Kirzner for instance calls a Market Discovery Process.

 If the state punishes the capitalists when they are successful, and gets in the way of the (Market) Discovery Process, they will destroy their incentives and the consequence is that they will produce less, and the pie will be smaller, and this will harm society as a whole.

Collectivism, by inhibiting the (Market) Discovery Process and hindering the appropriation of discoveries, ends up binding the hands of entrepreneurs and preventing them to provide better goods and services at a better price.

Thanks to free-enterprise capitalism, the world is now living its best moment, never in all of mankind's or humanity's history there has been a time of more prosperity than today. Today's world is more free, more rich, more peaceful, and more prosperous than in any other time of human history. And this is particularly true for those countries that respect economic freedom and the property rights of individuals.

The capitalist, the successful entrepreneur, is a social benefactor, who far from appropriating the wealth of others, contributes to the general well-being of all. Ultimately, a successful entrepreneur is a hero.

Libertarianism is the unrestricted respect for the project of life of others, based on the non-aggression principle, in defense of the right to life, to liberty, and to property. With its fundamental institutions being: Private property, markets free from state intervention, free competition, the division of labor, and social cooperation. Where you can only be successful by serving others with goods of better quality at a best price.

The impoverishment produced by collectivism is no fantasy, nor it is fatalism, it's a reality that we in Argentina have known very well for at least 100 years. We have lived through it, and we are here to warn you about what can happen if the countries in the western world -that became rich through the model of freedom-, stay on this road to serfdom.

We come here today to invite other countries in the western world to return to the path of prosperity. Economic freedom, limited government, and the unrestricted respect for private property, are essential elements for economic growth.

In concluding, I would like to leave a message for all entrepreneurs and business people here, and for those who are not here in person but are following from around the world: 

• Do not be intimidated either by the political caste nor by parasites who live off the state. 
• Do not surrender yourself to a political class that only wants to perpetuate itself in power and keep their privileges. 
• You are social benefactors, you are heroes, you are the creators of the most extraordinary period of prosperity we have ever seen. 
• Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral. If you make money, it's because you offer a better product at the best price, thereby contributing to the general well-being. 
• Do not yield to the advance of the state. The state is not the solution, the state is the problem itself. 
• You are the true protagonists of this story. 
• And rest assured that starting today, you can count on Argentina as an unconditional ally. 

Long Live Freedom, Dammit!

Watch at the end. The audience response was something like: "Was that real?!"

Philip Bagus, The leading economist in the Spanish-speaking world of the Austrian economics school summed up Milei's speech this way:

And by the way, he didn't fly there by private jet. He went cattle class. 

And he paid his own way.

[Hat tipsAlex Tabarrok, Mauricio Ríos García, agustina vergara cid, Ryan Bourne, Milei Explains, The Vigilant Fox, Creative Deduction, DutchLibertarian]

"Since only an individual can possess rights, the expression 'individual rights' is a redundancy. But the expression 'collective rights' is a contradiction in terms. "

"Rights are a moral principle defining proper social relationships. Just as a man needs a moral code in order to survive (in order to act, to choose the right goals and to achieve them), so a society (a group of [individuals]) needs moral principles in order to organise a social system consonant with man’s nature and with the requirements of his survival....
    "What subjectivism is in the realm of ethics, collectivism is in the realm of politics. Just as the notion that 'Anything I do is right because I chose to do it,' is not a moral principle, but a negation of morality—so the notion that 'Anything society does is right because society chose to do it,' is not a moral principle, but a negation of moral principles and the banishment of morality from social issues. ...
    "Yet that is the goal of most of today’s intellectuals. At the root of all their conceptual switches, there lies another, more fundamental one: the switch of the concept of rights from the individual to the collective—which means: the replacement of 'The Rights of Man' by 'The Rights of Mob.'
    "Since only an individual man can possess rights, the expression 'individual rights' is a redundancy (which one has to use for purposes of clarification in today’s intellectual chaos). But the expression 'collective rights' is a contradiction in terms. [Emphasis mine.]
    "Any group or 'collective,' large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members. In a free society, the 'rights' of any group are derived from the rights of its members through their voluntary, individual choice and contractual agreement, and are merely the application of these individual rights to a specific undertaking. Every legitimate group undertaking is based on the participants’ right of free association and free trade. (By 'legitimate,' I mean: noncriminal and freely formed, that is, a group which no one was forced to join.)
    "For instance, the right of an industrial concern to engage in business is derived from the right of its owners to invest their money in a productive venture—from their right to hire employees—from the right of the employees to sell their services—from the right of all those involved to produce and to sell their products—from the right of the customers to buy (or not to buy) those products. Every link of this complex chain of contractual relationships rests on individual rights, individual choices, individual agreements. Every agreement is delimited, specified and subject to certain conditions, that is, dependent upon a mutual trade to mutual benefit.
    "This is true of all legitimate groups or associations in a free society: partnerships, business concerns, professional associations, labour unions (voluntary ones), political parties, etc. It applies also to all agency agreements: the right of one man to act for or represent another or others is derived from the rights of those he represents and is delegated to him by their voluntary choice, for a specific, delimited purpose—as in the case of a lawyer, a business representative, a labour union delegate, etc.
    "A group, as such, has no rights. A man can neither acquire new rights by joining a group nor lose the rights which he does possess. The principle of individual rights is the only moral base of all groups or associations. [Emphasis mine.]
    "Any group that does not recognise this principle is not an association, but a gang or a mob.
    "Any doctrine of group activities that does not recognise individual rights is a doctrine of mob rule or legalised lynching.
    "The notion of 'collective rights' (the notion that rights belong to groups, not to individuals) means that 'rights' belong to some men, but not to others—that some men have the 'right' to dispose of others in any manner they please—and that the criterion of such privileged position consists of numerical superiority. [Emphasis mine.]

    "Nothing can ever justify or validate such a doctrine—and no one ever has. Like the altruist morality from which it is derived, this doctrine rests on mysticism: either on the old-fashioned mysticism of faith in supernatural edicts, like 'The Divine Right of Kings'—or on the social mystique of modern collectivists who see society as a super-organism, as some supernatural entity apart from and superior to the sum of its individual members.
    "The amorality of that collectivist mystique is particularly obvious today ..."

~ Ayn Rand, from her article 'Collectivised Rights' [emphases in the original, except where noted]

Why are some Māori protesting the new government? And what can we learn from it? [UPDATED]

 

SO LET'S FISK WHAT one of the Te Pati Māori (TPM) protest leaders said this morning, about why they've been out there trying to block traffic, because I think it's helpful to understand the protestors' objections to the new government's policies. And particularly revealing about a key difference on Te Tiriti.

Tureiti Moxon runs primary health provider Te Kōhao Health in Hamilton which is taxpayer-funded by Whānau Ora. She is against any rearrangement of Whānau Ora. She was also on the establishment board of the Māori Health Authority (Te Aka Whai Ora). Unsurprisingly, she is also against the new government's plan to bring Te Aka Whai Ora back into the mainstream health system. Before joining Te Kōhao Health, she worked for several years as a lawyer, working on Treaty claims. He has stood several times for Te Pāti Māori, and been their electoral chair for the Tainui electorate.

She is articulate, and seems representative both of those who've risen in protest against the policies of this government -- and those who've benefited from those of past governments. She told Corin Dann on Morning Report that the new government's policies are "anti-Māori" -- a "sweeping suite of policies" that are just, she says, "archaic."

THE "SUITE," SUMMARISED BY by interviewer Corin Dann, is what she claims to be an attack on Te Tiriti, on the Maori language, on the Maori health authority, and on a "smokefree" New Zealand. [her points are in italics]:

"[The new government] has been given sovereignty ... but what it doesn't have is the support of the people to whom a lot of those policies are aimed at."

Since her claim in about numbers: The number voting for TPM was in the thousands. The number out there this morning was in the hundreds. The number voting for the new governing parties is in the hundreds of thousands. But since Luxon has said he's going to govern for everyone, she has that point.

"In many ways we just feeling as if we're being attacked, every which way" she said, attacking the new government, "simply because a lot of their policies are ... anti-Māori policies."

Are they? Let's hear her argument.

"The worst of it is [the suite of policies is] taking us back a hundred years. It is taking us back to colonisation."

Really? Big claim. Still no argument.

"What we're saying is: No, we've ... worked too hard on our race relations [not just in] our organisations but in this country ... to bring about a better partnership in terms of Te Tiriti with the government and all those partners that we now have good relationships with."

The principle of partnership here is her key point. Which doesn't go back to colonisation, but only to Geoffrey Palmer and Richard Prebble -- and to Lord Cooke of Thorndon, whose Court of Appeal found, when asked by Palmer and Prebble to define (without offering any guidance from Parliament, as you'd expect from decenty-written law) what the principles of the Treaty might be, that it is "akin to a partnership." And which is, in fairness, what the new government says it will question via new legislation taken to a first reading in Parliament.

"They've decided to take back the power and control unto themselves" she says of that fairly tepid promise. "For a very long time ... iwi have been working very closely to bring about a partnership that actually has meaning, and is not just on paper.

But it's not even on paper. Cooke's Court only found something "akin" to a partnership, inviting further definition from lawmakers. 

In the meantime, "akin" is not "is."

Nonetheless, there's been significant momentum in the 36 years since to ignore that word "akin' and to cement in this idea of a full partnership -- as if that principle had been there since 1840, or had been enunciated in 1987 by the Court of Appeal.

And we might also ask: a partnership between whom exactly? That is to say, between the Crown (which Moxon acknowledges as one of the parties) and which particular individuals? Because, notice that she seems to be talking about a collective effort here, as if Māori as a collective should be co-governors, with some special class of rangatira acting as power-brokers on their behalf.  This is important in understanding her objections. 

"... [that] includes Maori in decision making ..."

Individual Maori make decisions every day about their own work and wellbeing. They're perfectly capable people. Why do they need the patronisation of a government? There was nothing in Te Tiriti requiring that. Nothing requiring they be in government -- even though many are, on their own merits.

"... and in co-governance ..."

Why? Te Tiriti never called for co-governance (see below). And the previous government's covert push to implement it was only partially successful. (Which suggests her main objection is to the break in momentum that she thinks this government represents.)

"... and with a swipe of the pen they decide, 'Nah, we're not having that any more'...."

And yet that's what governments (in whom she seems to put her faith) do all the time. And she does agree that this one has sovereignty. So we're back to her simply saying "I don't support it."

"... without even thinking about the consequences of what that actually means in terms of Te Tiriti O Waitangi, which has the guarantee of tino rangatiratanga; and there's no guarantee of tino rangatiratanga in the policies [inaudible]."

She's implying here that tino rangatiratanga must equal respect for Te Tiriti and the Maori language, for the existence of a Maori health authority and "smokefree" legislation, and support for widespread co-governance. Big claims! Respect for the first two can be agreed with -- even as we can debate what form that takes. The next two have no basis therefrom -- and in any case the majority of the "smokefree" legislation remains in place, unfortunately. 

Her last point, really, is the point in question here, and the one from which everything else would flow, if the last half-century's momentum (which she celebrates) were to continue.

"The Waitangi Tribunal has been around for about fifty years, and they have been the ones who have been the experts in Te Tiriti ..."

Not exactly. The Tribunal is only asked to hear and to advise the government of the day on alleged breaches of the Treaty, its hearings being adversarial (rather than any kind of partnership, or investigation), its historians being funded largely to seek out and highlight these alleged breaches, their reports on these breaches becoming (by their sheer volume) becoming the locus of modern-day historical research. And so if  they as historians and it as an institution have become experts in anything, it is primarily as experts in the Treaty's alleged misapplications, rather than in its ideal.  

There is a difference,

Note too that the Tribunal's findings are not and never have been binding on the government of the day. Depite all its apparent lustre, it is an advisory body only.

"... and in the principles ..."

No, the Tribunal is not even empowered to rule on the so-called principles -- which have developed in other courts as they have struggled to make sense of what this phrase means that inserted so unthinkingly into most law since. The Tribunal is empowered only to hear and advise on breaches of promise of Te Tiriti, not on any of that other legislation.

"...and in the development of Te Tirity jurisprudence. And what we're saying is that after fifty years of all that institutional knowledge is that everybody knows more about it than them."

No, I don't think that's what the new government is saying at all. One of the coalition partners (an actual partner) is saying it was a mistake thirty-six years ago to insert into legislation the phrase "the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi" without first defining it in legislation  -- a mistake, because it invited the courts to do the lawmakers' job for them, which one of the coalition partners is now trying to do.

"A lot of New Zealanders unfortunately do not know a lot about it..."

And this is very true. 

"...and they'd like it to disappear, as this government is trying to do now. To make it invisible. Well, it's not invisible, it's the founding document of this country."

It looks as if Ms Moxon knows very little about what this government is trying to do. Or at least, what one coalition partner is trying to do. Which, in this context, is to call for the undefined principles (dreamed up in 1987 and on) to be well defined. As all objective law should be. And not at all to touch what she calls the founding document.

"Whānau Ora  .... is an example of what New Zealand can look like: Maori looking after ourselves ..."

As the head of a Whānau Ora practice herself, Moxon is (like the well-heeled TPM president John Tamihere) a beneficiary of the taxpayer's funding. To be cruel, one might say it's more an example of the taxpayer looking after a Māori elite, like Tamihere, who funnel the crumbs to those they claim to represent.

"...Maori having control over our own health ..."

She's conflating two people here. Individual Maori do have control over their own health. And always have, And did just as much before the creation of the separatist health organisation that has missed all its own agreed targets. (Waikato Tainui leader Parekawhi Maclean saying (very kindly): "its inability to put in place the necessary level of capability and capacity to progress its key functions had hampered performance.") 

What she means is that some Maori have control over other the health of other Maori. Why does shared ancestry make that necessary? How does that help an individual's health outcomes?

I am hardly an advocate myself for a government health system of any kind. But a separatist system seems the worst of both worlds, particularly for individual Maori concerned with their own health, and forced into this system, for whom results have been less than stellar. Suggesting that prioritising kaupapa over medicine is perhaps not the best idea.

"...Māori having a say in what we would like to see, and what is needed, in our own communities ..."

Individual Māori, qua individuals, have a say in their community just as much as the next individual. It's becoming apparent that what she's advocating for is for some Maori (those like her and Tamihere et al) to speak on behalf of and 

"...and when they take those things away from us [that] we have worked so hard to stand up and to put into legislation and to get that real kind of partnership that we believe is necessary for us to thrive in this country as equals...."

This is the crux: Who's this "we" here?

She's not calling for all New Zealanders to be equal as individuals -- i.e., each of us enjoying equal individual rights and privileges under law per the third Treaty clause.  What she's after instead -- what she and others in her elite strata have worked so hard for, to achieve that momentum -- is for Māori as a collective to be made equal in political power to the government. With a Māori elite distributing the spoils.

That, to her and to many others, is what "partnership" truly means. Political power. 

It's a patronising collectivist vision that looks to government for power and largesse, and to individuals of every ancestry to be milch cows. It's not one envisioned by either treaty.

One-hundred and eighty-three years ago, Te Tiriti emancipated Māori slaves, and put an end to the idea that the mass of men here had been born with saddles on their back, with a few rangatira booted and spurred to ride them. That was the effect of Te Tiriti: to free taurekareka.

"... and they made it [the Māori Health System] out to be race based ..."

Isn't it?

"...in actual fact it's something that is needed in our country."

An already-failing separatist system is needed? I'm not sure she's even made an argument for that, beyond the argument that the ancestry of here and those like her should bestow upon them political power.

There was a name for that in mediaeval Europe: it was called feudalism.

"The government has to hear [this] because as long as it keeps pushing that  kind of rhetoric [?] and that kind of belief system, that's what's divisive, that's what's pulling this country apart, because we have a special place in this country, and that's [inaudible], and it's important that they get it right now." 

It is important they get it right. And I think they think they might.

Ned Fletcher argues that English and Māori texts of the Treaty
agree, and that both promise Māori self-governance.

HERE'S THE MOST IMPORTANT point she made -- and there are many. But this one stands out: that she  is talking at all times of Māori as a collective rather than of individual Māori. This helps reconcile the two apparently competing views of two persuasive recent views on the Treaty, aired in Ned Fletcher's recent book The English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi (which Moxon cites approvingly), and in Ewen McQueen's 2020 book One Sun in the Sky.

 Both books argue persuasively that the English and Māori texts do reconcile (which overturns the scholarship of several decades, since Ruth Ross first raised the issue fifty years ago), and both argue that Māori did cede sovereignty (without which any "partnership" would be moot in any case). 

But Fletcher argues that Māori (as a collective, through their rangatira) were promised self-governance, leading to partnership; whereas McQueen (writing before Fletcher's book) argues this paradigm makes no sense:

Taken to its logical conclusion, this paradigm sees iwi not so much as loyal subjects of Her Majesty's Government but rather co-regents expressing their own sovereignty. Advocates of this position assert the Treaty merely granted the Crown a partial concession to exercise authority over incoming settlers, while at the same time preserving for iwi ultimate authority over all things Maori. In effect it is argued that the Treaty established a dual sovereignty in New Zealand.

However, such thinking ignores both the Treaty itself and the historical context in which it was signed.

Start with the Treaty text. Much is made of the differences between the English and Maori versions. But one thing is certain - the word partnership appears in neither. The Treaty articles do not even imply a partnership in a constitutional sense. Rather they establish the British Crown as the ultimate legal authority in return for protection of Maori interests. The latter include land and chieftainship (rangatiratanga). However, that chieftainship is guaranteed within the context of the overarching sovereignty of the Crown.

As the Waitangi Tribunal noted in its 1987 Muriwhenua report: "From the Treaty as a whole it is obvious that it does not purport to describe a continuing relationship between sovereign states. Its purpose and effect was the reverse - to provide for the relinquishment by Maori of their sovereign status and to guarantee their protection upon becoming subjects of the Crown."

The tribunal's reference to the Treaty 'as a whole' is key. The Article Two guarantee of rangatiratanga must be understood in the context of the whole document. Iwi signed up to the whole Treaty, not just the second article. Article One establishes Crown sovereignty. In it chiefs agreed to 'give absolutely to the Queen of England forever the complete government over their land.' That's Professor Sir Hugh Kawharu's translation of the Maori version. It doesn't leave much room for manoeuvre.

[Hugh] Kawharu's translation of Article Three is equally straightforward. Maori took on 'the same rights and duties of citizenship as the people of England.' The Court of Appeal reinforced this in a key 1987 judgment, stating 'For their part the Maori people have undertaken a duty of loyalty to the Queen, [and] full acceptance of her Government.' Ironically this judgment also introduced the Treaty partnership concept that is now so popular. Full acceptance of Crown sovereignty is less fashionable.

The key difference is that Fletcher, I think, sees the Clause Two promise or "rangatiratanga" as a collective one, to be exercised by chiefly rangatira; whereas McQueen more properly sees the promise as applying individually, as a property right that could be enjoyed individually.

Just as Magna Carta was an agreement between nobles and king that came to recognise and protect individual rights of all, even commoners, so too does the recognition and protection of rangatiranga when seen individually come to do the same thing -- protecting all individual rights equally:

The preamble to the 1840 Te Tiriti makes clear that its purpose was to create a settled form of government and to secure peace and good order.

Article One confers on the Crown sovereignty or kāwanatanga (the right to make laws and to govern).

Article Two protects property rights and is based on Magna Carta principles. Magna Carta aimed to protect the English nobilities’ property rights by limiting the Crown’s powers. It catalysed a dynamic relationship between property rights and political power that led to the emergence of the modern British democracy. It created a basis for human rights protection by linking it to property rights. Magna Carta established the principle that no one is above the law – it helped establish the rule of law.

In Te Tiriti Article Two Queen Victoria promises ‘te tino rangatiratanga’ of their properties not just for rangatira and hapū, but for ‘nga tangata katoa o Nu Tirani’, that is ‘all the inhabitants of New Zealand’.

Article Three made Māori subjects of the Crown. It gave Māori equal rights with other Crown subjects, not additional or superior rights.

To use Moxon's words, but with this understanding: to thrive in this country as equals we all (as individuals) must take off our collectivist lenses...

Ewen McQueen argues that English and Māori texts of the Treaty 
agree, and that neither promise Māori self-governance.

UPDATE:

Writing back in mid-November, Moana Maniapoto confirms that Māori activists are interpreting rights to be collective, rather than individual -- the effect of equal rights being to make a Māori elite equal in political power to the government -- a clear grab for political power based on an incorrect understanding of rights.

She begins her opinion piece by quite explicitly opposing David Seymour "pushing individual rights over collective rights." So when Seymour clarify the Treaty's third clause to mean "All New Zealanders are equal under the law, with the same rights and duties," she opposes this because, she says:

Act interpret this to focus on individual rights. Not the obligation to ensure that all who share this land under the Treaty have equal enjoyment of their respective collective rights and responsibilities....

The "Tiriti-centric constitutional model" she demands would require power-sharing between collectives -- "Māori, Pākehā and tangata Tiriti, joining the dots to solving practical problems around housing, health, schools, water, environmental degradation . . .  roads."

Ayn Rand points out the flaw, and the power grab:

Since only an individual man can possess rights, the expression “individual rights” is a redundancy (which one has to use for purposes of clarification in today’s intellectual chaos). But the expression “collective rights” is a contradiction in terms.

Any group or “collective,” large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members. In a free society, the “rights” of any group are derived from the rights of its members through their voluntary, individual choice and contractual agreement, and are merely the application of these individual rights to a specific undertaking. Every legitimate group undertaking is based on the participants’ right of free association and free trade. (By “legitimate,” I mean: noncriminal and freely formed, that is, a group which no one was forced to join.)

For instance, the right of an industrial concern to engage in business is derived from the right of its owners to invest their money in a productive venture—from their right to hire employees—from the right of the employees to sell their services—from the right of all those involved to produce and to sell their products—from the right of the customers to buy (or not to buy) those products. Every link of this complex chain of contractual relationships rests on individual rights, individual choices, individual agreements. Every agreement is delimited, specified and subject to certain conditions, that is, dependent upon a mutual trade to mutual benefit.

This is true of all legitimate groups or associations in a free society: partnerships, business concerns, professional associations, labour unions (voluntary ones), political parties, etc. It applies also to all agency agreements: the right of one man to act for or represent another or others is derived from the rights of those he represents and is delegated to him by their voluntary choice, for a specific, delimited purpose—as in the case of a lawyer, a business representative, a labor union delegate, etc.

A group, as such, has no rights. A man can neither acquire new rights by joining a group nor lose the rights which he does possess. The principle of individual rights is the only moral base of all groups or associations.

Any group that does not recognise this principle is not an association, but a gang or a mob.

Any doctrine of group activities that does not recognise individual rights is a doctrine of mob rule or legalised lynching.

The notion of “collective rights” (the notion that rights belong to groups, not to individuals) means that “rights” belong to some men, but not to others—that some men have the “right” to dispose of others in any manner they please—and that the criterion of such privileged position consists of numerical superiority.

Nothing can ever justify or validate such a doctrine—and no one ever has. Like the altruist morality from which it is derived, this doctrine rests on mysticism: either on the old-fashioned mysticism of faith in supernatural edicts, like “The Divine Right of Kings”—or on the social mystique of modern collectivists who see society as a super-organism, as some supernatural entity apart from and superior to the sum of its individual members.

The amorality of that collectivist mystique is particularly obvious today ...