Witch doctors are “infiltrating” South Auckland.

South Auckland “community leaders” are warning that “witch doctors” are “infiltrating” South Auckland.

Warnings are being issued about black magic-practicing witch doctors said to be swarming into South Auckland and exploiting vulnerable people. …
    "They are here to suck money out of people. They are leaving people in a very devastated state -- suffering mentally, psychologically ... after losing large sums of money," she said.
    "It has got to a stage where South Auckland is swarming with [them].”

They promise the earth, suck you dry, and deliver nothing but misery in return.

They’re out there to exploit you.

Be on the lookout for them.

Yes folks. Be on the lookout for politicians, priests and pastors. Outside parliament and its surrounds, there is no place in the country where there are more government programmes, government plans, government agencies, and government-employed welfare agents per-square kilometre, nor more priests, pastors and promisers of bogus salvation. Not to mention “community leaders.” Because for all their promises, all their sizzling state solutions and “wrap-around support,” they’ve left people there in a devastated state.

These bastards have done way more harm than a little bit of simulated voodoo.

RELATED POSTS:

• South Auckland, again.
• Curing South Auckland
• Stop patronising us - Pacific leaders
• The 'warrior culture' of South Auckland, Part 1
• The 'warrior culture' of South Auckland, Part 2
• More government. More programmes. More violence.

Quote of the Day: LGM on Melissa Lee [update]

“Funny how this daft bat blames South Aucklanders for stealing when she is part of an outfit that is about to steal people's homes. I wonder if the irony of that ever occurred to her.”
- Little Green Man

UPDATE: And this, from commenter Buggerlugs at Kiwiblog is very good too, in response to Lee's "... it will stop criminals from South Auckland coming into the suburb to commit crimes . . . "

as opposed to the criminals currently living in Mt Albert? Oh, that’s right…one of them has already shifted out. To New York apparently.

Keep those quotes coming in.

Mt Albert: Where South Aucklanders come to burgle? [update 2]

Given Transport Minister Steven Joyce's announcement today of his decision for the Waterview motorway, tonight's Mt Albert electorate meeting -- a "Q&A on transport issues" -- was always going to be a debate on The Motorway. A noisy debate. Little did we know it was about to turn into a debate on South Aucklanders' propensity to burgle. On that more later.

First of all, as a Q&A it was hopeless: The politicians all brought their fictions to a fact fight. No candidate actually had the facts to answer the audience's questions. (Well, the Greens' Russel Norman did, but he preferred to make up whatever hurt the other candidates the most; and ACT's John Boscawen did, but unfortunately they weren't the facts about Steven Joyce's project but on the project Boscawen himself would like to see built.) It was all very bizarre, particularly as Melissa Lee's refrain for most of the evening was "I don't know," and "I'm here to listen."

Either National's Steven Joyce hadn't bothered to brief his party's by-election candidate about the motorway that's about to bisect her would-be electorate, or (being both a pretty girl and a former journalist) Melissa Lee simply hadn't bothered to find out the facts and thought a nice smile would be enough instead. Either way, it was apparent even to people in the room holding up National Party signs that when Melissa Lee says "I don't know" or "I can't remember" that on this much at least she's probably telling the truth.

I don't say that like it's a good thing. Clearly, details are not Ms Lee's thing. (And if she really was "there to listen," then why the hell was it so hard getting her to shut up when other people were talking?)

Details really are Russel Norman's thing. He thrives on details like the envirogeek he is, but he uses details less to explain than he does to explain away.

• He berated National "borrowing billions" to fund the motorway (which Liberty Scott points out it won't be), but was happy to have it borrow several billions to pay for his train set. He lambasted National for for building a motorway that will "cut the community in two," but is happy to build a heavy rail line that will have the same effect.
• He was happy to characterise the National proposal as "the above-ground option," when as he quietly conceded to David Shearer it is in fact to be in tunnels for around sixty percent of its length -- expensive tunnels built simply to avoid sites that are considered politically sensitive.
• He talked about how some American cities have up to eighteen lanes in their motorways "and we won't need that if we invest in public transport" -- strangely oblivious to the fact that all major American cities have made significant investments in public transport, but people still choose to use their cars.
• And in a question about the need to build roads to carry freight, he started blathering on about cycleways, prompting the person sitting next to me to ask if he really thought we were going to have the city's freight carried on a few cyclepaths?
  

Surprisingly though, I found Russel oddly impressive for a man who clearly believed hardly a word of what he was saying, but was comfortable just spinning these fatuous one-liners for the benefit of the Green goon squad in the room.

The one candidate who did mean what he said was Libertarianz candidate Julian Pistorius. (Disclosure: I was there carrying his pamphlets.) And ironically the one group with whom he made the strongest connection were the chaps from the Socialist Aotearoa grouping. It was only Julian, they pointed out, who is prepared to stand up for the people who the State is going to throw out of their homes against their will. And they're right. He is. Everyone else is prepared to use the "Federal Bulldozer" to ram through their own preferred option of either road or rail (and as Scott points out, if even the French can work out how to build motorways without throwing people out of their homes, then surely we could learn something from them, couldn't we? Couldn't we?) but only the Libertarianz candidate was prepared to point out that the government is supposed to protect people's property rights, not do them over.

And what of Labour's David Shearer -- "the grey machine man"? Well, his own goon squad was noisy, but he wasn't. His tie was colourful, but he wasn't. I'm sure he can write a memorable report, but whatever it was he said tonight left me as soon as I left the room. Perhaps that's why he was known as a bureaucrat's bureaucrat. What he said was so forgettable, but said with such authority, that he's bound to romp in come polling day.

In fact, most of what every mainstream candidate had to say on the night was both instantly forgettable and intended only for short-term political advantage. But there was one thing one candidate said that is now going to dog her through the rest of the campaign. Maybe longer. It will probably be the meeting's headline tomorrow morning. I say "her,"because the foot in the mouth belonged to Melissa Lee.

Asked to explain how the new motorway would most help the good people of Mt Albert, she explained that it would stop the bad people of South Auckland driving to Mt Albert to burgle people's homes. Asked to clarify by a questioner, she repeated the claim. Showing she's truly not one to stop digging when she creates a big hole for herself -- a hole as big as the number of open mouths in the room -- she insisted that the local police commander had told her this very morning that the biggest issue with which he has to deal is the number of South Aucklanders driving to Mt Albert to burgle people's homes.

I swear I am not making this up. It's true that the likely winner of the by-election, David Shearer, grew up in South Auckland . . . and in being Labour's "machine candidate" he could be said to be burgling the seat . . . but what the hell she was talking about, only Melissa Lee herself would know. Probably.

It was as incongruous and frankly ludicrous as Jenny Shipley's comment in Parliament several years ago (apropos of nothing relevant) that Polynesians tend "to climb in the windows of other New Zealanders at night." And it deserves to be treated with equal contempt.

UPDATE 1: Let me clarify something here. Steven Joyce and several commentators around the traps -- and now John Key -- have all suggested Melissa's South Auckland comment was made "in the heat of the meeting," "in the face of a hostile audience" and so forth.

That's not the case, and those commentators weren't at the meeting, which was hardly "hostile" in any sense. More bemused. Posting at Hard News, commenter Stephen Horsley is spot on:

I was at the meeting, and I would have to disagree [that this was a rushed response to a hostile audience]. It wasn't something that she just blurted out, in fact she seemed very pleased with herself for having thought of it. When asked to clarify the comment, she went into a fair amount of detail justifying herself. . . it appeared to be a view that she genuinely subscribed too.

That's exactly as I saw it too.

UPDATE 2: Liberty Scott runs the rule over the Mt Albert candidates, and says Vote For Freedom in Mt Albert:

I said on 4 May that "It might be better to just wait to see who all the candidates will be, before making a choice." of candidate. So I am pleased that Julian Pistorius is standing for Libertarianz.
Let's be clear, the motorway will be built, but only Julian can be a solid advocate for the private property rights of landowners who may face compulsory purchase, and for ways to respect that while progressing the road (for example, the Melbourne Citylink motorway was built by the private sector negotiating the land purchase from all those along its route).
Let's also be clear, a Labour MP will mean no change, a backbencher in a party that has no power over the next 2.5 years and which has shown a willingness to pillage taxes to buy an electorate.
A National MP will mean no change. Melissa Lee is already in Parliament, being MP for Mt. Albert will just give her a little more to do, but she won't be fighting for private property rights.
A Green MP will mean no change. Russel Norman will lead obstructive direct action against motorway building, whilst cheerleading on the pillaging of Mt. Albert taxpayers for a railway that even ARC has as a low priority.
ACT candidate John Boscawen has shown his level of judgment in voting for the W(h)anganui District Council (Prohibition of Gang Insignia) Act.
ALCP candidate Dakta Green is worthy of your vote if that one policy matters above everything else.
However, Julian Pistorius IS worthy of your vote if you want to shake up Parliament and get a man dedicated to standing up for Mt. Albert taxpayers and property owners. He wont be a backbench voice on a major party, or speaking to increase taxes or spend more of other people's money. He won't be claiming to speak for property owners on the motorway issue, but at the same time running roughshod over them with the RMA. He wont be supporting the megacity -- or even existing local government as long as it continues to have a legal "power of general competence" to do as it sees fit.
You see Julian will call for the government to undertake the tax cuts it promised. Julian will support private property rights as an absolute. Julian will also support the right of ALCP candidate Dakta Green to campaign to legalise cannabis without harassment, because Julian too supports legalising consumption and sale of cannabis for adults on private property.

Mt. Albert voters might baulk at voting Libertarianz when it is about choosing the government, but this is a by-election not a general election, and who could have a louder voice for Mt. Albert than a Libertarianz MP? Who will in principle oppose the confiscation of land for a road, or any purpose, and call for less government so Mt. Albert residents can make their own choices?
So go on Mt. Albert, vote Julian Pistorius as your local MP. Beyond anything else it will give Helen Clark the most unwelcome surprise when she wakes up in New York the next morning to see who she handed the seat over to.

Isn't that a delicious thought!

The four 'drivers of crime'

Another week, another local talkfest. Last Friday it was the 'Drivers of Crime' talk fest, which predictably produced "a rambling of predictable, ineffective hot air," said Libertarianz Social Welfare Spokesman Peter Osborne, but nothing at all that looked directly at those drivers.

And the talk fest ended with predictable calls for more govermment intervention, ignoring just as carefully as conference-goers had the elephant in the talk-fest's room: that it is existing government intervention that is the primary driver of crime.  Osborne notes the top four:

• Institutionalised welfare, particularly paying no-hopers to breed
• The government's factory schools, which promote illiteracy, deny children real knowledge, and block the growth of youthful independence
• The War on Drugs, which gives gangs an income
  
• No explicit right to self defence, which gives every NZer a 'kick me' sign that even criminals can read: "Come get me, I'm defenceless."
  

The first two created the underclass; the second two give them the freedom to pillage.

The problem of is simple: too little clear-eyed thinking, and too much Government Cheese:

Rugby Gods speak and the message is: "No poofters!" [updated]

Both Russell Brown and Cactus Kate point out the obvious about yesterday's Michael Jones/Inga the Winger endorsement of John Key and their much-publicised visit to South Auckland:  It's about religion, stupid. Says Cactus:

They [the rugby Gods] criticised Labour, saying they had undermined the moral values of Pacific people by decriminalising prostitution and allowing civil unions.
As much as you would like to blame Labour for everything including undermining the morality of New Zealand society ... this reeks of the very sort of nonsense that two role models in a minority community should know better than to fuel.

Too right. And there's something of a double standard that allows them to get away with it: they're not just sporting Gods, which gives them a well-deserved pass card for most things, but they're also, ahem, brown -- which these days delivers double-plus immunity to serious criticism.

In effect they've made a statement here that Polynesians should vote National as Labour endorses those horrible immoral homos and hookers. I would imagine no one of a lighter-skinned race could get away with such a comment. It was big news when Lockwood relayed on employers' comments relating to the size of Asian hands and Polynesian toilet habits...

Because essentially, outside the 'no homos and hookers' lark -- which, let's stress, Key is happy to channel for electoral benefit without any commitment, thank goodness, to alter -- there's no difference in what either National or Labour promise for South Auckland: which is more of the same welfarism that's killing it

No place in the country gets more government money and government 'interventions' poured into it than South Auckland – yet no place in New Zealand has worse social statistics.
    The only answer you will get from National, Labour or any other government party is more money, more programs, more social workers. And then they shut their eyes to the inevitable crime blow-out and blame it on … the weather.  Or the moon. [See for example my earlier articles on this].

Michel and Inga can talk all they want about wanting "our people" to be not just working in factories but owning those factories, which outside the overt racism is a wonderful sentiment, but there's nothing in National's toolbox that will make it any easier for that to happen, no sign they're any more aware than Labour of the welfare mountain on the horizon, and in any case it wasn't the primary reason for their endorsement: It was always all about religion, stupid.

UPDATE: Canterbury Uni economist Paul Walker points out that it's not just National's toolbox is empty, there's but it's actually destructive. "It won't help anyone own more factories, it could however put people off wanting to try to own them." Which, he says, raises serious questions about John Key's much vaunted economic understanding.  Read his piece in full at his Anti Dismal blog: Key's economic understanding.

Time to make a stand!

What does it take for New Zealanders to rise up and demand their government forego all the nonsense they shouldn't be bothering with, all the bossy-boot bullshit about baubles and bureaucracy and scampi and scandals, and focus instead on the one thing they're legitimately supposed to be doing, which is protecting New Zealanders from violence?

What does it take?

Will the random, violent, bloodthirsty stabbing of a man in central Auckland last night be the final straw? Is that enough, finally, to make you sit up and say "No more!"

Will it make you speak out to demand that government start doing its real job? That it starts protecting you and me from every nutter who'd like to raise a hand against us in violence, instead of doing us over themselves? That it begins to realise the primary focus of law and order is protection from criminals, not protection for criminals.

It's time -- right now -- to put victims first, not criminals, and to make damn sure the number of victims takes a rapid and benevolent dive.

What are you going to do about demanding a change?

UPDATE 1: I just heard Labour's Mark Gosche and National's Chester Borrows discussing the the murder on Radio Live, and their "solutions" to the rising tide of violent crime. "We both agree on the solutions," said Tweedlum's Chester Borrow's. Yes we do, agreed Tweedledumber's Mark Gosche.

Did their so-called solutions entail a greater police focus on protection from criminals, and less on giving violent criminals an easy ride and an early exit from prison (if they ever get there)? An end to the failed system of paying no-hopers to breed? Legalising the right to self-defence and to the means thereof? Any of that? No, what they both insisted is the urgent and necessary solution to the rising ride of violence, especially around Auckland, is "stronger communities." "Targeted welfare." More "stay-at-home parents."

No wonder we're inundated with savagery.

Even if they were right, the policies they're following are only destructive of stronger communities. Whether delivered by muck sprayer or fire hose, the result in South Auckland of several generations of taxpayer funded largesse is several generations of people who think they're entitled to live at someone else's expense. The Socialist Samaritan has not been a success. Welfarism is a certified killer.

The parents encouraged to stay at home by the gobs of welfare doled out to nearly three-hundred thousand New Zealanders are hardly hold the solution to anything, even to their own damned lives. And the good parents? Hell, they're both going out to work, and they need to -- and when they tot up their take-home pay at the end of each year, they probably notice that at the present level of fiscal rapacity one of them is going out to work just to pay their tax bill -- just to pay for stay-at-home no-hopers and political beneficiaries like Gosche and Borrows, and for their political masters for whom the welfare bill is little more than a sophisticated election bribe.

What does it take for the time-servers to realise it's time for more than just hand-wringing? What will it take for you to demand that they do?

UPDATE 2: Susan the Libertarian tells Leighton Smith, "There is a proverbial last straw, eh." Listen to Susie here explaining why this should be the last straw for every thinking person. She starts fourteen minutes in. "Is this enough to pierce your apathy?"

UPDATE 3: Russell Brown thinks I've lost my marbles: this post you're now reading is apparently an ideologically-motivated rant that enjoys all the internal consistency of your average tantrum. Oh dear.

UPDATE 4:  I respond to Russell's post here: Murder? It's not OK!

Cynical crackdown on honest alcohol outlets

"This is not a nanny state measure," says Commerce Minister Lianne Dalziel this morning, announcing the biggest nanny state measure since ... the last several.   This claim has about as much veracity as the Prime Minister's claim last week that the number of bottle stores in Manukau were contributing to violent crime in the area: Exactly zero.

What Dalziel was announcing was a raft of new restrictions on bottle stores -- Not nanny state, but "something with teeth" she says limpidly. These include:

• the size, location and layout of bottle stores,
• how many bottle stores Ms Dalziel will allow in an area,
• when they will be allowed to open,
• their proximity to other premises like schools.
• something called "one way doors".

Remember, this is not a nanny state measure.  Yeah right. [More details of nanny's wish list at Stuff, and here in an interview with Dalziel at Radio NZ.]

But can you spot anything there, anything at all, that would have saved the life of Navtej Singh?  Because, if you remember, it was the murder of Navtej Singh that necessitated this new piece of knuckle-dragging nanny statism.

Frankly, Dalziel's  crackdown on bottle stores in the wake of Navtej Singh's murder is as cynical as her 'crackdown' on oil companies announced last week -- neither is intended to achieve anything substantive (although they will both make conditions more onerous for honest businessmen); all they are intended to do is convey a picture of a government who will do something, anything, to bad news off the front page.

'Shoot the victim' -- and make even more victims

Helen Clark & John Key's disgraceful 'shoot the victim' response  to Navtej Singh's brutal murder - which is to impugn honest shop owners and close down the shops of his colleagues -- is not just factually challenged (as Whale Oil demonstrates), it's not just punishing to all of us (as Oswald bemoans), but it's historically and demonstrably destructive.  As Phil at Pacific Empire explains,

excessive restrictions on liquor outlets actually contributed to one of Auckland’s most notorious murders...  [As that murder and research by Paul Christoffel demonstrates] if you criminalise something, or even just restrict the supply, you will create a black market, with inevitably violent competition. And while there is currently no, or almost no, black market in alcohol, further restrictions may well resurrect the practice of “sly-grogging”. Especially as excise tax goes up again on July 1, raising the price of spirits by up to 10%. Ill-thought-out policy will result in unintended consequences - in this case, providing another profit-making opportunity for organised crime.

Like South Auckland needs more profit-making opportunities for organised crime, right? And like the politicians really care, right?

Curing South Auckland

I said yesterday I'd offer some solutions to the mire that is South Auckland, some simple, some not so simple.  Here they are, in summary:

1. A police force that protects the innocent.  One that has the tools to do the job, but more importantly has the knowledge and training and backup and will to use them.
2. A justice system that takes the guilty off the streets. Rudy Guiliani's successful 'Broken Windows' policy is a guide: start with the small crimes, where failure to punish leads offenders into bigger crimes, and put these right first.  (And remember that justice isn't about retribution, it's about protecting the rest of us.)
3. Hold parents accountable in law for the offences of their children.  You have them, you take responsibility for what and whom they destroy.
4. Stop paying no-hopers to breed. We are forced by government to pay people to have children they don't want. The result of all those unwanted children appears on the front page of our newspapers nearly every day.
5. Have an education system that gives youngsters the tools for life -- that teaches each of them, not how fit in and how to follow (which is all the present factory schools teach them), but how to use the brain they are born with, and how to use it to give themselves wings instead of shackles.
6. Perhaps most important of all is this, which is much, much harder: work towards the abandonment of the 'church-on-Sundays' thinking that infests South Auckland more than any other part of the country -- which imparts a superstitious hope that someone else will come along and can solve all one's problems -- and towards the destruction of what tennis ace Chris Lewis calls 'the crab-bucket mentality,' the hatred of achievement with which young South Aucklanders shackle themselves and damn their more successful brothers, and instead of the 'warrior values' of dependency and conflict and renunciation that are all many young South Aucklanders see, promote a philosophy of individualism that offers genuinely life-affirming value to which to aspire --

What I mean by this last is real values for living life on this earth.  In one way it's the most difficult of the six points to achieve (and in another it's the easiest: all we have to do is encourage youngsters to think), yet it is by far the most important.  The first four or five points are necessary, but not sufficient.  The only real antidote to the bad ideas that so many young South Aucklanders have imbibed with their welfare-mother's milk --ideas that are killing them and their neighbours -- is the better ideas that will show them their true potential.  Chris Lewis explains what I mean in his conclusion to his article on the 'crab-bucket mentality' that holds so many youngsters back:

    ....in a world where the predominant trend is toward anti-achievement & anti-success, motivational fuel is something that we all need from time to time to propel us toward our goals. Which is why I would like to commend to your attention a book that provided me with a tremendous amount of motivational fuel very early on in my tennis career.
    The book is entitled The Fountainhead, by the Russian/American novelist Ayn Rand. In the introduction to her book, she tells us, "Some give up at the first touch of pressure; some sell out; some run down by imperceptible degrees & lose their fire, never knowing when or how they lost it ... Yet a few hold on & move on, knowing that that fire is not to be betrayed, learning how to give it shape, purpose & reality. But whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature & of life's potential. There are very few guideposts to find. The Fountainhead is one of them."
    At a time when, as a seventeen-year-old, I was just setting out to conquer the tennis courts around the world, an attempt that demanded excellence & achievement every step of the way, it was The Fountainhead that helped to inspire me in the face of discouragement from the "crab bucket mentalities" who told me I was wasting my time.
    For anyone who believes in the importance of achieving his or her values & goals, who believes that happiness is the end result of such achievement, & that happiness is the norm when independence, in thought & action is promoted, encouraged & pursued, The Fountainhead comes with my highest recommendation.

Lindsay Perigo expands on the theme in a piece he wrote six ears ao in response to a particularly egregious article in Craccum on suicide.  Called Affirming Life, I post it here in its entirety.

    Yesterday's furore about the 'Craccum' "How to commit suicide" article & your comments on this programme about it set me to thinking about the time I appeared on 'The Ralston Group' when we panellists were asked our explanations for the high rate of youth suicide.
    I stated my own suspicion that the problem came down to a failure of philosophy. Youngsters were taking their own lives at precisely the time one asks life's big questions & searches for ideals to guide one's conduct. Religion, to which one traditionally repaired for answers, was discredited & had not been replaced with a viable secular alternative - leaving a values vacuum, leading to despair. What youngster would be inspired by the jaded cynicism so manifest in so many once-thoughtful adults?
    But is a viable, secular alternative to religion possible? Can life have meaning without an after-life? If there is no god to inspire ideals & prescribe values, can there be any other source? Can man discover it? Theologians & philosophers alike have answered these questions with a resounding, No! Many professional philosophers revel in proclaiming their discipline irrelevant to the conduct of everyday life. The moral status of benevolence, they say, is no different from that of malevolence, creativity from destructiveness, honesty from deception, etc., and a belief in any of these values over their opposites is merely an arbitrary preference, with no objective validity. Ethically, it's deuces wild.
    The current subjectivist/relativist/nihilist morass may seem unappetising, they concede, but that too is an arbitrary judgement. There are no grounds for seeking anything better - there *is* no "better."
    The Russian/American novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand begged to differ. It is reality itself, she argued, that confronts man with the need for morality - a code of values designed to facilitate the process of living - because it confronts him with alternatives amongst which he must choose (he has no choice about choice). At the most fundamental level the choice is: life or death. If one chooses death, there is nothing more to be said; if one chooses life, the book of morality opens, & one must fill in the pages oneself, making one's choices in the presence of alternatives to the ultimate value of: life.
    To the nihilist's gleeful 'coup de grace,' 'Ah! But why should one value life in the first place?' Rand replied: The question is improper. The value of life need not & cannot be justified by a value beyond life itself; without the fact of life, the concept of value would not be possible in the first place. Value presupposes life; life necessitates value.
    To the existentialists' lament that without something beyond life, life itself has no meaning, she responded similarly - the very concept of meaning can have meaning *only* in the context of life. Ultimately, the meaning of life, if one wants to use that terminology, is ... *life* - one's own life, since one cannot live anyone else's - & what other or better meaning could one conceive?
    A creature endowed with immortality, denied the alternative of life or death (& their barometers, pleasure & pain) would have no need of values & could discover no meaning in anything since nothing would be of any consequence to it. It is man's nature as a living, mortal entity, unprogrammed to survive, constantly facing alternatives, endowed with a conceptual/volitional consciousness, that simultaneously makes the need for morality inescapable and the fulfilment of that need possible.
    For a human being, "is" is fraught with "ought"; "ought" is an irresistible aspect of "is" - the traditional dichotomy between them is false. The task of ethical philosophy is to prevent their being artificially sundered. A successful outcome - a morality derived from and consistent with the facts of reality - is, by virtue of those very characteristics, *not* arbitrary (disconnected from reality) but objective (consonant with reality).
    Rand went on to argue that a reality-based, life-affirming morality would concern itself not merely with survival, but survival proper to the life of the sentient, conceptual being that man is. While life might be the *standard* of morality, *happiness*, she argued, was its *purpose*. "The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live."
    In Rand's novel The Fountainhead, a young man fresh out of college, looking for spiritual fuel for the journey ahead of him, is wheeling his bicycle through a forest, when he encounters the architect Howard Roark, contemplating some breath-taking new structures - his own - in a nearby clearing. "Who built this?" he asks. "I did," Roark replies. The boy thanks Roark & walks away. "Roark looked after him. He had never seen him before & he would never see him again. He did not know that he had given someone the courage to face a lifetime."
    To all this country's young people, happy & unhappy alike, I would repeat what I said on 'Ralston': Read this book - & the philosophy that produced it. You have nothing to lose but your doubts; you have your dreams to win. I repeat that advice today.

For those who agree with the prescription I've outlined here and who do wish to help the youngsters of South Auckland, I can suggest at least these three things that flow directly from my suggestions above:

1. Join the only political party that is committed to points one to five above, and help us promote those ideas this election year.  If not us, then who?
2. Contact one of the three Montessori schools in South Auckland and tell them you'd like to sponsor a child to attend -- or better yet, sponsor the training of a Montessori teacher for one of these schools.  This is precisely the sort of education that does give them wings, what Dr Montessori called education for the human potential.
3. Help out those of us who want to reintroduce the Fountainhead Essay Contest next year to encourage youngsters to read The Fountainhead -- that is, to offer to a new generation the inspiration to face a lifetime that reading The Fountainhead has given some of us.  (Here's what one participant in the ARI's American competition has to say, and here's the winning 2002 New Zealand essay.

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff Read more about this book...

To Educate the Human Potential (The Clio Montessori Series) by Maria Montessori Read more about this book...

READ THE EARLIER POSTS IN THIS SERIES:
South Auckland, again - NOT PC (June 17, 2008)
The warrior culture of South Auckland, Part 1 - NOT PC (October, 2005)
The 'warrior culture' of South Auckland, Part 2 - NOT PC (October, 2005)
More social workers, more violence - NOT PC (November, 2005)
The great con that is social welfare - Peter Osborne, Libertarianz, Scoop, (January, 2007)

South Auckland, again.

Crime and poverty in South Auckland are once again in the headlines, just as they have been every month for the last ten years, and probably will be for the next ten as well.  Despite government programme after government programme after government programme, it just doesn't get any better, does it.

Crime and poverty in South Auckland is not the result of a shortage of money or a full moon, it's the result of an excess of poor choices.  Many of those poor choices have been from politicians, who have sat back and watched as government programme after government programme after government programme has had absolutely no positive effect on either crime or poverty, and yet have never bothered to themselves whether it's their own programmes that might be to blame.

Let me give you something to think about: No part of New Zealand has had more government than South Auckland.  And I suggest, as a former resident of the place (and one who still visits to help out with my old footy team in Manurewa*),  it's no accident that no part of New Zealand is less attractive.

Most of South Auckland is government-planned, government-designed, and built almost entirely with government money -- and every new problem attracts more government action plans and even more "resources."

Government houses fill the suburbs and people overwhelmingly on government benefits fill those houses, from which children emerge every day to go to government schools where the latest fashionable government curricula and government educational programmes are delivered, and their parents emerge every three years to tick the box of the political party promising even more government intrusion, and even more suffocation of enterprise.

If anecdotal evidence is correct, there are more government programmes, government plans, government agencies, and government-employed welfare agents per-square kilometre in South Auckland than there is anywhere else in the country outside parliament and its surrounds.  And the place is a disaster.

Might I invite readers to have a really good, hard think about that as they read the daily headlines that emerge from there.

The problems of South Auckland are not too little government, but too much.  If there is a violent underclass, and South Auckland seems to be doing its best to prove that there is, then it is the perverse incentives created by government paternalism and forced redistribution that has given birth to it.  Between them they remove any reward for responsibility -- and if South Auckland really is poor in any one thing, it it this.

Paternalism undermines responsibility. Dependency creates disaster.

Lindsay Mitchell put it bluntly last year: "Whatever the arguments about the legitimacy of the dropping unemployment figures, "[don't] forget there are still almost 300,000 working age beneficiaries - double the number we had 20 years ago," and many of them live (and vote) in South Auckland.

    The underclass isn't everybody on a benefit. It's a group of people who refuse to live in society in a peaceable, co-operative and constructive way. Their thoughts are only for today and themselves. If they aren't already criminals of some kind they are on the fringes. And it isn't an "emerging" class of people. But, judging by what we read in the newspapers and what we see on TV, or what we experience firsthand as victims, it is growing. Bugger reported crime levels. Look at victims of crime surveys.
    Then if you looked at WINZ records most of these people are there. They abuse welfare, they abuse or neglect their children, they abuse each other. But most of all, they abuse opportunity.

I've written before about this, and I'll give you the links in a moment, but think for a moment about just one phrase above, and how the incentives created above have fostered what it describes:  "Their thoughts are only for today..." 

That is the problem at the heart of South Auckland.  Think about it.  How you solve that takes more than just another government programme.

Tomorrow I'll mention some solutions -- some of them hard, some of them easy, none of them involving knee jerk bans on bottle stores, armed police patrols, or more social workers.

FURTHER READING:
The warrior culture of South Auckland, Part 1 - NOT PC (October, 2005)
The 'warrior culture' of South Auckland, Part 2 - NOT PC (October, 2005)
More social workers, more violence - NOT PC (November, 2005)
The great con that is social welfare - Peter Osborne, Libertarianz, Scoop, (January, 2007)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* I'll be out there at Mountfort Park on Saturday, in fact, installing barbed wire around the interchange bench.  ;^)

NOT in support of murder

I must confess I'm disturbed by the many messages of support and sympathy I've seen around the place for the fifty-year old murderer of Pihema Cameron, a man who knifed the fifteen-year old for the offence of tagging his Manurewa fence. This wasn't self-defence, for which he'd have my support. He didn't drag the young tagger from his fence and discipline him, for which he might have my sympathy. He didn't just chastise him, which he certainly deserved. Instead he chased him three-hundred metres down the road and stabbed him through the heart. That's not self-defence -- the only legal defence available to him. That looks more like murder.

For tagging his fence, he murdered him.

I just don't understand how people can support murder.

Now I don't know the murdered youngster from a hole in the ground -- which is where he is now -- but when I was Pihema's age I must confess to having tagged a building or two around South Auckland. I'm not proud of it. It wasn't smart. But I grew up. Pihema Cameron never will.

I just don't understand how people can his support murder.

Command and control education okay, says Minto

The Urewera 17 transcripts and John Minto's close association with all the protagonists was enough to show that the motives of his Global Peace and Justice mob were the reverse of those suggested by the name.  It was certainly neither peace nor justice that the snipers' rifles and molotov cocktails were intended to produce.  Minto's other interest, of course, is the Quality Public Education Forum, and like GPJ, it's another mis-named front.  As his rebuke to Tim Shadbolt over the issue of educational innovation demonstrates, it's neither quality nor education that interests him.  It's control.

Southland Institute of Technology (SIT) has used the government's tertiary 'voucher scheme' to deliver innovative education systems country-wide, says SIT's mayoral champion Tim Shadbolt, in courses that compete with other providers in both content and delivery.  But the government's new command-and-control tertiary scheme, which has seen him announce a year-long campaign of opposition, will kill SIT's innovative approach, he says, and kill off the opportunity of education for many youngsters who relish the teaching tools used in SIT's classrooms.  "There are kids in South Auckland who will miss out [if the courses are dropped]," says Shadbolt, pointing out for example that SIT's courses that use TV and computers as teaching tools had been successful with those who had difficulty in traditional classrooms. "A lot of street kids find paperwork off-putting. They're more comfortable with computers and TV and are prepared to have a go."

But this is competition and innovation delivering quality education.  That's not what Minto is for.  Minto literally wants to "erase 'entrepreneurialism' from the curriculum."  Showing his true colours, Minto insists Shadbolt and SIT should sit still, stop innovating, and do just as the education commissars tell them to, which means to butt out of competing and possibly showing up other educational providers.  Competition in education, under which SIT and its students have flourished, creates a "pointless and wasteful turf war" according to Minto, adding nothing to education "but the false notion of choice based on glossy brochures."  Such is Minto's notion of competition.  Organisations competing for your favour create a "pointless and wasteful turf war" and "a false notion of choice based on glossy brochures."  He would prefer the system more familiar to Soviet housewives, it seems: the empty shelves and substandard produce of a commissar controlled collective.

It would be a "tragedy for all young New Zealanders," says Minto, "if Mayor Shadbolt's campaign to undermine the new [command and control] funding mechanism is successful."  In fact, it would be an even greater tragedy if Minto were accepted as a genuine supporter of quality education.  Like peace and justice, it's of little interest to him except as a front for his real interest: Marxism.

UPDATE: By the way, if you're wondering why the the names of two of the groups associated with New Zealand's recent "terrorist camp" raids sound so benign ("Global Peace and Justice Auckland," spearheaded by communist John Minto and "Peace Action Wellington" by sniper rifle trainee Valerie Morse), then as Lindsay Perigo suggests, "Think Gramsci."

Destiny: You have to laugh

The demise of the Destiny Party and the stumbling launch of a new Christian coalition has Paul at The Fundy Post rolling on the floor with mirth. Here's some of what's making him laugh so hard:

It seems only yesterday that Brian Tamaki, then but a lowly Pastor, was promising that his party would be ruling New Zealand within a few years.

1. And it came to pass that he was utterly wrong...

3. So Brian went forth and spoke with men of many flavours of Christianity, even with Anglicans. They spoke of forming a new party. And, although the Christians were followers of a man who, it is written, was born out of wedlock (and just out of Bethlehem) and whose earthly father was cuckolded by his real father, who was also Himself and some other guy called the Holy Ghost, and whose mother was conceived in Heaven, the party would be based on Family Values...

So we have a new Party, its Co-Leaders being one, Gordon Copeland, who clearly thinks the other, Richard Lewis, is an idiot. He is, of course, right...

It all makes about as much sense as the Trinity.

If the library of His Grace the Bishop of Mt Wellington contains anything other than colouring-in books, then one might speculate that he's been studying his Tertullian in preparation for this 'launch.' “I believe it because it is absurd,” theologian Tertullian was supposed to have said. "It is certain because it is impossible." One can hear the "Amen"s all the way from South Auckland.

Read all of Paul's post: 'One Door Closes, Another One Shuts.'

UPDATE: Stuff blogger Colin Espiner nails two chief problems for the new party:

1. "Most of the mainstream churches maintain strictly apolitical stances, and many New Zealanders have long believed religion and politics shouldn’t mix."
2. "Too many egos, not enough party."

The successful Mr Ha

A lot of commentators spent a lot of yesterday talking about the "sub-prime" mortgage market in America and about "loan sharking" here in NZ, and (at least on Radio New Zealand) promoting restrictions on borrowing "especially among immigrant communities." According to this patronising view, "members of immigrant communities" -- that is, individuals who have the gumption to move to New Zealand seeking a better life for themselves and their families -- are just too dumb to understand all the complicated stuff about interest and repayments and the like.

Following this patronising line to its logical conclusion, the all-too-dumb Judith Tizard has has now revealed the Clark Government plans to "deal with" loans sharks by restricting the activities of finance companies in immigrant areas.

I thought of that patronising advice and those restrictive plans as I read the story of Don Ha in NBR's Rich List this morning, a man who came to NZ in 198o from Vietnam penniless (presumably landing first in the Mangere immigration hostel up the road from where I was in 1980) and who is now worth $60 million. Tizard's restrictions on lending to immigrants would not have helped Mr Ha, who I feel confident knows his way around a balance sheet far better than Ms Tizard and any of her colleagues working on her plans would.

The irony is too much for me. People like Tizard with a barely functioning brain suggest that immigrants (of which Mr Ha is the supreme example) are too dumb to be allowed out in finance houses on their own. Perhaps I might suggest that she and her fellow nannies could think of people like Don Ha next time they feel like offering their opinion on the abilities of immigrants. The Herald has a brief account of Ha's career in its report on the Rich List:

The self-made-man model is alive and well in the form of 38-year-old Manukau real estate magnate Don Ha, who comes in at 143rd equal overall with his financial worth estimated at $60 million.Not bad for a Vietnamese refugee who was just a kid when he arrived in New Zealand in 1980 with his penniless family.The family opened a string of bakeries in South Auckland but Mr Ha went his own way, importing shoes and belts from Asia, only beginning his real estate career in 1994. Mr Ha became a top salesman in the Professionals Group, selling 86 properties in his first year.

He was headhunted by the Ray White Group in 2004 and now owns Ray White Manukau, which has subsequently achieved record-breaking sales. Mr Ha shelled out $2 million on a Zabeel colt from champion racemare Sunline at the Karaka yearling sales in January.

More on the Rich List and the very smart Mr Ha here at the Herald. And you can see Mr Ha and the Rich List's editor being interviewed this morning on the ASB Business News at this TVNZ link.

Protecting yourself from vandalism is good

A company endures sabotage, disruption and destruction of property and projects by a small group of goths and vandals.

The company pays a young numb nut to infiltrate the organisation and report on when protests and disruption were planned.

Who's in the right here? The vandals? Or those trying to protect themselves from destruction and disruption?

The Greens' Russel Norman is exactly wrong to be denouncing Solid Energy (the company) for infiltrating a spy into the Save Happy Valley environmental protest group (the vandals). Not just wrong, but downright hypocritical because as Trevor Loudon points out, Russel himself was weaned by Australia's Trotskyite DSP and its former incarnation the Socialist Workers Party, both "notorious in Australia for their relentless infiltration and manipulation of other organisations."

Read Trevor's lowdown on the tactics of the Trotskyites and Russel's involvement "for several years ... in an organisation that practised manipulation of other organisations as a matter of course": Is Russel Norman being hypocritical over "infiltration" allegation.

UPDATE 1: A surveillance state? Libertarianz spokesman Greg Balle makes the perfectly sensible point that this incident illustrates a key reason why State Owned Enterprises such as Solid Energy should all be privatised. Says Greg:

While Solid Energy remains an arm of the state, activities such as surveillance of citizens takes on a very sinister element, particularly as they have the might of the sate at their disposal to protect them against legal challenges to such dubious behaviour.

If the SOE's were private corporations they would not have the protection of Nanny State's skirts to hide behind and would be subject to the rigours of the free market of industrial espionage and information, as such they would be open to court action like any other private corportation. A Libertarianz government would privatise all SOE's, like Solid Energy, and return proceeds from the privatisation to taxpayers. Eliminating the rogue arms of the corpro-state indulging in spying, intimidation and monopolistic behaviour, would be a welcome benefit from the sale of these enterprises.

Makes perfect sense to me.

UPDATE 2: Trevor Loudon provides another instructive link indicating that The Greens' have more than just an emotional connection to this issue. Young Frances Mountier, who you've probably seen on your TV news leading the rabble opposing Solid Energy, is a graduate of Sue Bradford's Kotare School project (which has been mentioned here before). Explains Trevor:

The Kotare School is openly modelled on the Communist Party USA linked Highlander School in Tennessee, famous for training martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and many other prominent "civil rights" activists.

Kotare's Green Party trustees include MP Sue Bradford (Deputy Chair), Karen Davis (Treasurer) and Sue Berman. Gordon Jackman another trustee is the partner of Green party activist, Catherine Delahunty, who tutors at the school.

Several Kotare personnel, including Sue Bradford and Quentin Jukes have Workers Communist league backgrounds. The school teaches "social activism" based on the teachings of Brazilian Marxist, Paolo Friere. It has trained many prominent youth activists, including John Darroch from Auckland Radical Youth and Wellington Palestine Group activist Tali Williams.

According to Kotare's Spring 2006 newsletter

Kotare has a Youth Advisory group of people under 25 who have volunteered to give us feedback on how we are working generally and also specifically with younger people. We are meeting with them on November 11 and 12 to discuss our work. The advisory group members are Tali Williams from Wellington, Frances Mountier from Christchurch, John Darroch from South Auckland and Tui Armstrong from Whangarei. These young people have all participated in Kotare activities since the age of 15 and have active networks and great ideas!

So Frances Mountier has trained at a Green Party linked Marxist training school since the age of 15!

The phrase "brainwashed" comes to mind.

The real story here is that Solid Energy is fighting not just a bunch of irresponsible young protestors. It is also battling the Green Party, including several of its leaders and strategies learnt in Sue Bradford's Marxist training school.

One can hardly blame them for fighting back with a little bit of espionage.

No, one couldn't. I'd suggest that the Save Happy Valley Coalition are less interested in saving snails than they are in saving and promoting Marxism.

Otahuhu College fire

I was sorry to see news of the fire at my old school yesterday, in the very building in which I learned my Technical Drawing and decided to become an architect (left). Very sad. But how badly was it damaged, I wondered?

Finding out what caused it seems easy enough: "The Fire Service," reports Radio NZ ,"says a contractor fixing a leak accidentally started a fire that damaged six classrooms at a South Auckland secondary school." But six classsrooms? The Radio NZ report this morning quotes "East Auckland deputy chief, Roger Callister," who says "there has been significant damage to the roof" -- which you can see in that small picture -- and also Principal Gil Laurenson, who says that "about six classrooms were lost."

But this morning's Herald report also quotes Mr Callister, this time saying that "fire damage was contained to two classrooms."

Just another example of why we shouldn't rely on journalists too much for our information.

Who created the underclass?

If John Key is the solution, then we're really in the shit. Feeling annoyed this morning that anything as vacuous as John Boy's blatherings of yesterday can be taken any way but with a laxative, I stumbled up on this over at Cafe Hayek, which I've changed only slightly, as is 'The Kiwi Way.'

Call me cynical but I doubt that most politicians who promise to solve (real and imaginary) problems by passing statutes and peddling policy truly believe their own rhetoric. They might not disbelieve what they say, but I'm convinced that politicians don't ponder the complexities of reality deeply enough to convince themselves of the truth of what they proclaim. They say what they say and promise what they promise chiefly as a means of ascending to power and glory.

I suspect that people self-select into politics because they have an unusually large lust for being in the limelight and an unusually small concern for the ethics of the actions they must take to get there. And because enough voters stand ready to blame their own (real and imaginary) misfortunes on the evil doings of "the rich" or "the corporate elite" or unprincipled power-seekers eager to ride this ignorance into office.

If John Key's underclass exists anywhere, I reflected that it surely exists in South Auckland, and I thought back to a comment I made last year after the seventh homicide in South Auckland in just three months and on the back of a new government programme that was launched then "to take on South Auckland's street violence problem" (and that predictably has had no discernible impact):

Let me give you something to think about: No part of New Zealand has had more government than South Auckland. Most of South Auckland is government-planned, government-designed, and built with government money -- and every new problem attracts more government action plans and even more "resources."

Government houses fill the suburbs, people overwhelmingly on government benefits fill them, children go to government schools where the latest fashionable government curricula and government educational programmes are delivered, and (if anecdotal evidence is correct) there are more government programmes, government plans, government agencies, and government-employed welfare agents per-square kilometre than anywhere else in the country outside parliament and its surrounds.

The result has not been good. In fact, it has been catastrophic.

Might I invite readers to have a really good, hard think about that.

Do you think that more government programmes, or more government-sponsored programmes -- peddled by whichever party in whatever fashion -- are really going to fix the problems that too much government in the lives of people has already helped to create?

When government is the solution, there's every chance that it was government that created the problem. Will even more government remedy that? Lindsay Mitchell puts it bluntly: Whatever the arguments about the legitimacy of the dropping unemployment figures, "[don't] forget there are still almost 300,000 working age beneficiaries - double the number we had 20 years ago..."

The underclass isn't everybody on a benefit. It's a group of people who refuse to live in society in a peaceable, co-operative and constructive way. Their thoughts are only for today and themselves. If they aren't already criminals of some kind they are on the fringes. And it isn't an "emerging" class of people. But, judging by what we read in the newspapers and what we see on TV, or what we experience firsthand as victims, it is growing. Bugger reported crime levels. Look at victims of crime surveys.

Then if you looked at WINZ records most of these people are there. They abuse welfare, they abuse or neglect their children, they abuse each other. But most of all, they abuse opportunity.

This country, with its passion for egalitarianism, has bent over backwards to give each and every person opportunity and many have simply hurled the opportunity back in the faces of well-meaning people.

That's true, isn't it, and no amount of blathering -- however well-intentioned -- can change that. As the Libertarianz spokesman to deregulate welfare Peter Osborne says,

"John Key's mumblings of 'The Kiwi Way: A Fair Go For All' is typical PC speak for further political meddling into our lives and more disastrous social engineering.... If life is to have any meaning or value people must help each other by choice, not through involuntary redistribution."

That's the basic truth that all the talk of government assistance for the underclass fails to address, isn't it: that if anything has created this underclass, then it is government assistance and forced redistribution. More of the same will only bring more of the same.

LINK: On the nature of politics - Cafe Hayek
Key's speech "ho hum" - Lindsay Mitchell
More government. More programmes. More violence. - Not PC (Peter Cresswell), Sept, 2006
The great con that is social welfare - Peter Osborne, Libertarianz, Scoop

RELATED: Politics-NZ, Politics-National, Welfare, Auckland, Libertarianism

Crime protection in South Auckland

How the new 'left' and 'right' meet in the authoritarian middle

Many people have expressed surprise at the alliance of George W. Bush and Tony Blair, men respectively of the right and the left but who share an obviously genuine friendship. The answer to the apparent paradox is to be found in their respective philosophies. The so-called 'philosophies' of the left's 'Third Way' and the right's Neo-Conservatism' to which these two subscribe share more than their promoters might like to concede.

In fact, I would suggest that in all essentials the 'Third Way' is just the mirror image of 'Neo-Conservatism.' It is no accident that George Bush and Tony Blair have become allies; the understanding they so clearly share is born of a common way of seeing the political landscape, and it has lessons for us here in New Zealand.

Let me explain. These two political schools of the right and the left have until recently both of dominated their respective political 'markets,' and they've done so largely by making themselves 'pragmatic on principle': that is, they accept what they view as the 'political realities' of the present ideological and political geography of a country; they concede that capitalism produces rather more than any other alternative yet devised; and they've chosen to shackle the levers of power and the engine of capitalism simply to deliver votes.

That in a nutshell is the 'big idea' behind the ruling ideologies of both the Neocons and the Third Way zealots.

Far from being big ideas, both are little more than strategies for gaining and holding power for their 'side,' but in placing strategy over principles both leave largely bare the question of what they are gaining power for -- the result is that for both schools the pursuit of politics becomes power for power's sake - and we know (and have seen in the NZ Parliament recently) what the pursuit of power tends to do to those who pursue it absolutely. It's not at all pretty, and not all a natural environment in which freedom and liberty can flourish.

Fortuitously, recent posts on the local blogosphere make the comparison between the two relatively transparent. Prof. Brad Thompson's superb analysis of American conservatism gives the necessary keys to understanding the so-called philosophy of Neo-Conservatism; and now and in an apologia to the local left posted yesterday, Labour strategist Jordan Carter summarises for the "further left" the Third Way strategy followed by Labour here since 1993.

Third Way
If we look first at that "Third Way strategy" as summarised by Jordan: "The key components of that locally have been," he says,

• Emphasis on the connection between social justice and economic development
• Moderate political positioning, in touch with voters not activists
• Pragmatic policy lines in terms of public spending and the market/community boundary
• An avoidance of 'reform' as opposed to consolidation in most areas of policy
• Incremental change and routing around, rather than challenging, opposition to particular policies

As I suggested above, this is hardly a 'big idea' in terms of political philosophy - this is strategy not philosophy, and if I may translate from the language of wonkery above into how it has worked in practice here, the strategy has been this:

• Shackle capitalist means for socialist ends -- that is, use the engine of capitalism to produce, and the maw of politics to redistribute
• Accept the political landscape (as Blair did in keeping the Thatcher reforms, and Clark has in keeping the Richardson/Douglas reforms) and seek instead to capture and massage and persuade the unthinking and the easily persuaded
  
• Take ownership of the 'commanding heights' of state welfare (health, education, welfare), and use welfare distribution as a tool of politics: that is, make sure welfare is politically targeted (remember for example how South Auckland came in for Labour last September?) and that new welfare programmes are identified with Labour (Welfare for Working Families anyone?)
• Keep former New Labour activists close and compliant (Hello Jim), and the harder left rabble quiet by whatever means necessary, including both 'buy-in' and buying off.
  
• Blur public-private boundaries, and make both public and private companies either politically or financially dependent on the party in power

The aim of course is not reform per se, except to the extent that reform might attract votes. The measure of success for such a strategy is not the success of the programmes and policies introduced (as demonstrated in the almost complete lack of interest shown by Labour in plummeting literacy and numeracy, increasing (if now-hidden) hospital waiting lists, and the almost complete disinterest in recent poverty surveys showing increasing poverty), instead the real measure of success to such a strategist can be best measured by the number of votes such a strategy attracts. As Jordan boasts:

[The 'Third Way' strategy] has been a very successful strategy for Labour. The party has rebuilt from a very low share of the vote of 28% in 1996, to three consecutive election wins around 40%. The message of moderation, and of investment in public services instead of cutting taxes, has been an electoral winner.

Never mind the poverty and dependence, feel the power! "We won, you lost, eat that!" The aim of the 'Third Way' strategy is clear enough: it is power. Power for power's sake. The pursuit of power, and the holding of power once gained -- and all policy is geared to that aim, policy as the hand-maiden of power-lust.

Neocons
How does this differ from Neo-Conservatism? Hardly at all. Professor Brad Thompson summarises the advice given by Irving Kristol, the father of the Neo-Conservatism:

Kristol’s advice to Republicans is: Stop taking your principles so seriously (as if that were ever a problem). The successful statesman, he argues, is chameleon-like in his ability to redefine his principles in the light of changing circumstances. Don’t concern yourselves with principles; concern yourselves with acquiring and keeping power.

In other words, make policy the hand-maiden of power-lust. Third Way leftists and Neocon rightists might start at what they see as different ends of the political spectrum, but they both meet up in the authoritarian middle. Continuing the summary of the Neocons [with Thompson's words double-indented and my own single-indented):

Neocons agree with the underlying moral principles of the socialists; they disagree merely over the best means to achieve their shared ends. As do all good socialists, neocons hold that welfare should be regarded as a right because it is grounded in people’s “needs”—and, as Kristol explains, for the neocons, “needs” are synonymous with rights...

So how does a conservative welfare state work? And how does it differ from a liberal welfare state? Behind all the rhetoric, the shabby secret is that there is very little difference except how and by whom the readies are doled out. Both liberals and Neocons opposed Clinton's refoms of the welfare state. Both liberals and neoncons promise cradle to grave nannying. The Neocons, who (like Roger Douglas) talk about socalist ends through capitalist means simply insist that the all-powerful state should provide, but people should be allowed some "choice." The state will continue to put its hand in your pocket, increasingly so say neocons, but "the people choose their own “private” social security accounts; they choose their own “private” health and child-care providers; and parents receive vouchers and choose which schools their children will attend."

The choices, of course, are not the wide-open choices of a free market; rather, the people are permitted to choose from among a handful of pre-authorized providers. The neocons call this scheme a free-market reform of the welfare state.

Socialist ends through capitalist means, you see (or at least "conservative" means, capitalism not being the process so described). And as far as the neocons' "big idea" goes, that's it. George Bernard Shaw observed years ago that a government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always rely on the support of Paul. The neocons rob Peter, rob Paul, and channel that money to the providers pre-approved by the ruling party (who can expect to show their gratitude in the appropriate way), clipping the ticket on the way on behalf of the paternalistic state.

So the Neocon strategy of gaining and keeping power differs in practice only marginally from the strategy of the Third Way; both seek to politicise the delivery of welfare, and in doing so both seek to enlarge and expand the nannying state and put it at the service of buying votes.

In practice, then, Neocons and Third Way strategists are soul-mates. George, meet Tony. Tony, meet George. (Jordan, how do you feel?)

The Vision Thing
But as I've suggested above there is a problem with the strategies of both Neocons and Third Way zealots like Jordan's beloved Labour party, and it is best summarised by Brad Thompson in talking about the neocons:

The most remarkable issue about the neocons’ notion of a “governing philosophy” is that it is a strategy for governing without philosophy. The neocons unabashedly describe themselves as pragmatists; they eschew principles in favor of a mode of thinking—and they scorn thinking about what is moral in favor of thinking about what “works.” For over twenty-five years, they have fought an ideological war against ideology.

And at the end of that 'war' -- and just like Labour -- all they are left with is power, and little real idea of what to do with it. And here's the key thing, and it is this: the 'vision thing' is left for someone else to determine,

Never mind "the vision thing" -- about which George Bush Sr. agonised -- give yourself over instead to absolute rule, and let the other side seek out new visions . That's the neocon ticket. The three most important rules for absolute rule: Compromise, compromise and compromise. The fourth rule: if visions arise that are going to happen anyway, then just roll over and make sure you take the credit... This is what it means to “think politically.”

And therein here's the hope for local politics. As long as Third Way and Neocon strategists eschew ideas and the 'vision thing,' then ideas and vision become (or should become) the province of their ideologic opposition.

The question is, are they up to it?

LINKS: Third Way Tactics in Labour Politics - Just Left (Jordan Carter)
The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism - C.Bradley Thompson, The Objective Standard
'CONSERVATISM: A NEW OBITUARY.' Part 5: The "neocons" in practice -- adding cynicism to love - Not PC (Peter Cresswell)
Labour has failed the poor - No Right Turn (Idiot/Savant)
The Tom Roper Prize this year goes to Christchurch, New Zealand - Diogene's Lamp
The illiterate teaching illiteracy - Not PC (Aug, 2006)
Neither free nor education - Not PC (Nov, 2005)

RELATED: Politics-US, Politics, Objectivism, History-Modern, History-Twentieth Century, Politics-NZ, Welfare, Education, Health

More government. More programmes. More violence.

TVNZ: South Auckland violence tackled
The government has launched a plan to take on South Auckland's street violence problem. It comes as three teenagers faced court following the latest killing on Sunday morning... It is the seventh homicide in South Auckland in just three months... A 26-point action plan to tackle the problem has been unveiled by the ministries of Education, Justice and Social Development, local councils and police.

Let me give you something to think about: No part of New Zealand has had more government than South Auckland.

Most of South Auckland is government-planned, government-designed, and built with government money -- and every new problem attracts more government action plans and even more "resources."

Government houses fill the suburbs, people overwhelmingly on government benefits fill them, children go to government schools where the latest fashionable government curricula and government educational programmes are delivered, and (if anecdotal evidence is correct) there are more government programmes, government plans, government agencies, and government-employed welfare agents per-square kilometre than anywhere else in the country outside parliament and its surrounds.

The result has been catastrophic.

Might I invite readers to have a really good, hard think about that.

LINKS: The warrior culture of South Auckland, Part 1 - Not PC (October, 2005)
Mangere Brown - Not PC (July, 2006)

RELATED: Auckland, Welfare, Libertarianism