The real tragedy of the Jason Arday story

It's a well worn cliche that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and the tragic death of Jason Arday has highlighted the signposts to that hell.

Barry Wall, who writes the Substack "The Court of the EDIJester" writes:

If cases like this are not one-offs, and I suspect strongly they are not, then the real Tragedy is larger than one individual, or institution.  

Indeed not. There is evidence a-plenty of dubious academia.

Wall makes a far more critical point about the value of universities and the pursuit of excellence:

Meritocracy, intelligence, talent and excellence, the application of rigorous principles that identify, create and fund those who are the best of us; in whatever field, has given us an extraordinary life, luxurious in fact by any historical standard. 

Cognitive ability is one of the strongest predictors of who reaches that level of achievement, and the only one that matters in the long run.

This is the engine that drives the machine in the creation of our wonderful civilisation. 

It is through this that sees women, men, of all backgrounds discover, invent and create in ways that uplift themselves and others, thousands, millions. Whether it be in medicine, engineering, chemistry, computing, design or creativity, the nurturing of minds applying reason, thought, research, enquiry and philosophy to humanity, the world and the universe. 

Wall says what's far worse than the Arday tragedy is the philosophical state of higher education that erodes all of this. 

Diversity statements at recruitment stage become ideological screens that filter out wrong think, and competence then barely gets a look in.

This is the tragedy, there are after all only a few who could be brain surgeons or engineering geniuses and those high-ability people who notice that identity and political conformity outweigh results leave or never enter precisely because they excel cognitively...

The result is a thinner pipeline of the people most likely to generate the breakthroughs that later become miraculous treatments, ideas or inventions that enrich the world for us all.  

Not only is competence devalued as being not of primary importance, but the ideological compliance that critical theory demands (because the term is essentially Orwellian - you cannot be critical of critical theory or you will be accused of being "x"ist (bigoted against an oppressed class, because critical theory is for "liberation" of the "oppressed")). 

China is not growing its technical capacity and capability by embracing a philosophy that degrades and diminishes individual achievement, decries science as "Western" or an oppressive tool that might be called "yellowness".  It's absurd to imagine that the strategic rivals of liberal democracies would kneecap their cleverest people, unless it was to protect their own power.

Yet the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are all subordinate to this malign philosophy that resembles the intellectual sclerosis of education in north Korea, which has spent decades being subordinate to a manufactured pseudo philosophy called "Juche". 

Juche is used to be manifestly reductive of all history, economics, politics and public policy to the utterances attributed to the Kim family, with blame for everything lying at the United States, followed by Japan and allies of the United States. Note, of course, that Pyongyang abandons this nonsense altogether for its research into military technology including nuclear weaponry, including cyberwarfare and its extensive involvement in transnational crime and smuggling. Reason is important when your objective is to achieve.

Wall points out that at worst, making science less attractive and denying the advancement of some because of identity could be costly by taking talent away from its potential:

In the worst case scenario tens of millions still die each year from diseases that are, in principle, a matter of better science. 

Perverting the rate at which high-ability talent reaches the positions where that science is done has a body count. 

The same EDI machinery that elevated an unstable personal narrative at Cambridge is the machinery that makes the next generation of geniuses and innovators harder to find. 

The wider cost is paid by society atrophied in identity creation, virtue signalling, therapeutic twaddle and the desire of a fetid lanyard class hell bent on enforcing equity through the application of power.

Consider for a moment how someone who is clever, talented and motivated, and who either doesn't belong to one of the declared "oppressed" identities, or who doesn't want others thinking their recognition comes from being one of the "oppressed" identities. Who, with any esteem, really wants to be thought of as a DEI hire, someone advanced not because of their abilities, but to tick a box?

Furthermore, if you don't embrace the stifling binary world of critical theory, you'll be cancelled and hounded out of being heard and out of careers, forever blighted by the cardinal sin of being deemed Xist or Xphobic. You may be accused of simply being in the pay of the claimed conspiracy of global capitalism through the Atlas Network, or even worse just being a white supremacist/fascist/hate monger/Zionist or one of the many other monikers thrown about rabidly. 

You might even find your career stifled because you haven't paid appropriate fealty to critical theory concepts - whether it be not taking into account the views of enough people of an oppressed identity, not reflecting an oppressed culture in your research about - say - Ancient Greece 

On the Arday story ended sadly by his own hand, I thought Barry Wall's comment is a good place to end:

The story of Jason Arday is tragic, hubristic and sad, but it is also a metaphor for our society as a whole, living a constructed delusion, predicated on identity, shored up by approved emotional responses and maintained by a state apparatus so steeped in its love of all things EDI that what was once insane is now becoming sane.

The real tragedy is that the machine that creates, maintains, elevates and lauds the processes and ideas that allows an Arday to thrive and succeed is profoundly anti-civilisation and we must eradicate it in all its forms.

The Cambridge debacle is more than a case of academic misbehaviour, it is a portent, an omen if you will, and we would do well to heed it. 

Perhaps the very worst element of all of this is how impotent, incompetent and ignorant so many politicians are of this philosophical cancer.  Of course maybe half embrace it and are subordinate to it, because it fits within their own philosophy, of those who maybe would not embrace it, perhaps another half are too frightened to do anything but leave it alone, whereas most who confront it do so in a blundering blunt and counterproductive way.  

The answer to this is not a counter-identitarianism, switching oppressed and oppressive roles, the answer is to return to enlightenment values, modernism and reason.

Loony leftwing teachers

In the UK...

"A Labour MP was prevented from visiting a school in his constituency because the teaching unions and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign do not like the fact that he believes Israel should have a right to exist. The MP in question is Damien Egan, who represents Bristol North East" ...

We know of this story only because Steve Reed, the Communities Secretary, who describes himself as a Zionist, mentioned it during an address to the Jewish Labour Movement, without naming Egan. Reed said of the people who had scuppered Egan’s visit: ‘They will be called in, and they will be held to account for doing that, because you cannot have people with those kinds of attitudes teaching our children.

Well, Steve, there’s people with those kinds of attitudes teaching our children in pretty much every school in the country, save for a few free schools and some of those in the private sector

"In fact I cannot think of a single occupation more likely to be stocked with these pig-ignorant dunderheads than teaching, a calling which they gravitate towards because they are useless at everything else and also to acquire a soupçon of power which is otherwise wholly absent from their wretched, impotent lives"

Rod Liddle, The Spectator

Mining companies, white supremacy, Zionism, neo-colonialism, libertarianism and education vouchers: The fascist programme to establish a racist, oppressive state that will wreck the planet

I wrote in my previous post that I am embarking on a journey, thanks to the sagacious commentator and academic, Dr. Mohan Dutta.  Although he is unaware of this, I am truly grateful for him showing me a new way and recognising that I may have been duped, for years, to be an instrument of dark forces, from overseas and paid for by mining and fossil fuel interests, who only want to make a profit exploiting others.

I said I had questions, and I do, as I have been deconstructing the network of connections that means libertarianism is actually a vehicle for fascist white-supremacy and neo-colonialism, including Zionism, which is a tool of not only apartheid, but allegedly genocide.  This is serious stuff and very confronting for anyone who has spent a good 25 years or so promoting libertarian ideas and politics, to be told that actually what you advocate for isn't more freedom, less government and getting the state out of people's lives, but rather a sinister strategy to facilitate takeover of society by mining and fossil fuel interests.  It's not advocacy for individual rights, but advocacy for racism and oppression of people.

I'm unsure what this really means for what form of government we should have, how laws should constrain freedom of speech, funding of political activities and the rights of mining and fossil fuel companies. I don't know what it means for foreign affairs, beyond ending diplomatic relations with Israel.  However, I do want to know, and I want to know whether everything I believed in is for naught, or if there are shreds of campaigning for individual freedom that are worth continuing with.

So here are some of my questions: 

1. Given Zionism is irredeemable (apartheid, settler-colonialism), do Jews have a right to self-determination as a people? If so, where? If not, what is it about them that denies them this right?  Are they not a nationality or race, but just a religion, or is it that they have a right to self-determination, but somewhere else? If so, where?

2. Does the right to self-determination on land where your ancestors once lived and governed, disappear if the people who moved there subsequently, and were part of empires that conquered that land, still have their descendants living on part of that land?  If so, does that not also apply to lands with generations of settlement of people who live on land previously occupied and governed by other people indigenous to that land?  How is this applied consistently in a principled way?

3. What makes "whiteness" a unique characteristic among racial groups globally? Does it apply to all ethnicities that are visibly "white", notwithstanding the diversity of languages, religions, histories, cultures and experiences?  If not, what is its essential nature? (I know there are books, but they are not all consistent). 

4. Is it possible to want individual freedom, small government and human beings interacting voluntarily without being part of a scheme to enrich mining and fossil fuel companies? 

5. Many declared white-supremacists are anti-semitic, and hate Jews as much as other races (such as the Nazis), what makes them different from the ones that are libertarian, who like Jews and hate Nazis, is this just internecine warfare between people who are similar, or something else?

6. Islamist militant groups universally use violence as a form of resistance and often expound racist rhetoric that is Islamic supremacist in nature. Where do they fit in, or am I misconstruing their otherwise heroic revolutionary acts of self-determination that are not to be interpreted under the lens of "whiteness"?

7. If libertarianism is fascist and white supremacist, are statist authoritarians (those advocating a very intrusive and dominant state role in the economy and society) anti-fascist and anti-racist? Or rather, is the solution to libertarian fascism and racism the adoption of a large government that has significant control over economic and social systems?

8. If education vouchers are a tool of white supremacy, does that mean that Sweden (a pioneer of educational vouchers) is a white-supremacist state?  Are all European states white supremacist? How do they avoid this?

9. Is Zionist backed white supremacy the most virulent and destructive ideological influence in the world today, or are there others? I gather the Hindutva moment is similar, as Dr Dutta has written much about it, but do other countries or cultures also promote similarly fascist ideologies? If so, what are they?

10. If the solution to Palestine is for Israel to be disbanded, should we even consider the future of Palestine at that point? What would happen to the Jews there?  Jews in most Arab countries have declined in number precipitously, is this something to be concerned about, or should we just not care what happens to the Zionists?

11.  What is the answer to Ukraine? Is this just white supremacists fighting each other? Should we all just let them fight and hope for peace? 

12. How should the international order be restructured for decolonisation and anti-racism? Presumably it means the US withdrawing globally, along with disbandment of NATO and an international order of the South having more power (excluding fascist Hindutva India).  Can we trust the People's Republic of China to lead a new peaceful world order, or will a multi-polar world just be more peaceful and just?  Does there need to be reparations paid by Western countries (and presumably Japan) to the South? How is consensus to achieve this to be reached to take such taxes from people in those countries? How do we avoid corruption in the South seeing such money accumulating in the hands of national elites?

13. Decolonisation should always exclude violence against civilians, but does that include what a post-colonial government does to civilians?  Some post-colonial governments have been brutal to the civilian population in implementing their policies (see Equatorial Guinea, Uganda, Cambodia, Central African Republic, Zaire/DRC), how should we respond to this?

14. Virtually all of South and Central America is dominated by people who are, by the definition applied to Aotearoa, Australia, Canada and the USA, settler-colonialists. How is this injustice to be addressed? Is resistance against these governments, from Mexico to Chile, justified? 

More questions will come no doubt

Should universities be teaching a common ideological line?

 Arif Ahmed in Unherd writes:

Now imagine being a clever, white 18-year old, not at all racist and not at all privileged either, away from home for the first time, in a lecture or class in (say) sociology, or politics, or philosophy, where a lecturer asserts, perhaps quite aggressively, that white people are inherently racist. Your own experience screams that this is wrong. But do you challenge it? Of course not – after all, it may have, and could certainly be presented as having, the effect of “marginalising minority groups”; and your own institution has told you, through formal training and via its website, that this is racism and we must all stand up to it.

So you keep quiet. So does everyone else; and the lie spreads. Repeat for white privilege, or immigration, or religion; perhaps also, given similar training and encouragement, for abortion, or the trans debate, or… Repeat for a thousand students a day, every day, for the whole term. There is in Shia Islam the most useful concept of Ketman. It is the practice of concealing or denying your true beliefs in the face of religious persecution. At best our hypothetical student spends her university career – possibly, the way things are going, the rest of her life – practising a secular form of Ketman. Or worse: habitual self-censorship of her outer voice suffocates the inner one too; she starts to believe what she is parroting; she denounces others as racists, or transphobes or whatever; and then after three or four years, starts working for a publisher, or a media outlet, or a big corporation...

Ahmed is a Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge and as you might assume from his name, is hardly claiming Britain is without racism given his own experience...

Genuine racism and racial discrimination do exist – there is less now than 30 years ago, but you still notice it. You notice or hear about slurs, pointed comments, racist graffiti or physical violence; you notice being overlooked.

I remember looking for a room to rent when I first started working in London. All my white friends had found one pretty quickly. But for some reason, whenever I showed up to see one it had “just been taken”. I’ll never know how much of this was racism in my own case; but I do hear, and I have no reason to doubt, that similar things happen today.

And hardly anyone thinks this is "ok" or rational or moral. It continues to shock me when I hear of racism because I almost never experience it myself. However, simply expressing vehement opposition to racism and wanting people to be treated as individual, on their merits, is regarded by the post-modernist collectivist anti-racist lobby as being "racist". There is only one way to tackle racism, and that is to buy into the whole post-modernist structuralist philosophy that analyses the world into competing, zero-sum intersecting groups of people, with the dominant powerful group being the "white heterosexual CIS-gendered men" who have laws, organisations, institutions, beliefs, structures and systems designed to privilege them over people of different races, gender, sexuality etc.  Structuralism states that power seeks to replicate and sustain itself, so racism exists because that powerful group, of oppressors, needs racism to exist.  Of course capitalism is seen as being a part of this, as is liberal democracy, as is every single philosophy that counters structuralism, because naturally, the inherent characteristic of humanity is that people with power, hold onto it, and try to exclude others, because they fear the loss of power.

To the post-modernist structuralists (of which Critical Theory is a subset), "anti-racism" cannot mean a classical liberal or libertarian view, such as Ayn Rand's description of racism as the "lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism".

That position is, with direct parallels to the Marxist-Leninist position around class, that who is expressing opinions is almost more important than what opinion is being expressed.

Marxist Leninists regarded that if one of your parents had owned a business or land, then you were obviously not of the working class, so your opinions not only did not count, but were by definition tainted by not having enough "class consciousness". Your life was one inherited from an oppressor, so you not only could not be allowed to be near power, but you needed to atone for your inherited privilege, so regardless of your skills, merit or capability, you had to be at best demoted (USSR), at worst silenced or eliminated (Democratic Kampuchea).  Post-modernist "anti-racists" use exactly the same philosophical stereotyping based on race.  If you are "white", your opinions are automatically to be thought of as suspect as best, you are deemed to be privileged and it's probably best if you just keep quiet, because when you DO express an opinion, it is assumed you want to assert your privilege, and you want to silent the truly race conscious.  

Note also both Marxist-Leninists and post-modernist "anti-racists" give only a cursory pass to those of the preferred groups (working class or ethnic minorities) as long as they tout the "correct line".  Working class people questioning Marxism-Leninism are at best misguided and needing re-education, at worst traitors working alongside class enemies. Similarly, racial minorities questioning "anti-racism" either need re-education, or are treated as "Uncle Toms". 

Of course Marxism-Leninism saw a few versions of its implementation, from Tito's relatively liberal approach (which allowed some civil society and localised debate and engagement) through to Pol Pot's absolutist totalitarian eliminationism (whereby anyone deemed to potentially be risking ideological dissent was eliminated). The stage of post-modernist anti-racism is not quite there yet, as white people (don't forget they are all treated as uniform, although the experiences of just about any white migrants from non-Anglophone backgrounds are hardly without racism) can be re-educated to have race consciousness and be aware of their privilege (which absolutely exists in certain contexts, but is far from universal and far from as simplistic as is touted), and learn to keep quiet and not oppose the now predominant academic and increasing dominant media and corporate ideology.

Ahmed notes that for all of the prioritisation of opposition to racism, universities are remarkably silent on a whole host of other worthy causes to oppose but why?

Racism is bad, but so is much else. And yet our soi-disant “anti-racist” universities rarely if ever call themselves “anti-genocide” or “anti-corruption” or “anti-censorship” or (for that matter) “anti-corporate-bullshit”. In summer 2020, you could hardly move for universities making fatuous assertions of “solidarity” with victims of racism. But you won’t find similarly prominent (and probably not any) support, from the same sources, for free speech in Hong Kong or for the non-extermination of the Uyghurs. But then upsetting China might affect your bottom line.

Of course Ahmed is writing from the UK, which statistically sees the worst performing group being white working class boys (three identities there) and the best performing being Chinese boys and girls, followed by ethnic Indians. The idea that institutional racism is the number one cause hindering social mobility in the UK seems questionable at least. In the US, the shadow of legally mandated discrimination towards African-Americans continues to be large, but it's far from clear that university mandated ideological uniformity assists in addressing this. Similarly in NZ, there is an obvious gap in outcomes between Māori and non-Māori education, health and incomes, which clearly is in part a legacy of past discrimination, but again if there is a goal to address issues that particularly affect people from some communities, then how does ideological conformity help address that?

Ahmed believes that there needs to be an ideological purging of universities engaging in ideological training. 

The obvious solution is the immediate and permanent scrapping of any kind of politically or ideologically oriented training or induction. It has no place in a university.

Then, enforce explicit institutional neutrality. In February 1967, the President of Chicago University appointed law professor Harry Kalven Jr to chair a committee tasked with preparing a “statement on the University’s role in political and social action”. The upshot was the Kalven Report, which stated in the clearest possible terms both the essential function of the University and the essential requirement for political neutrality that followed:

The mission of the university is the discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge. Its domain of inquiry and scrutiny includes all aspects and all values of society… A university, if it is to be true to its faith in intellectual inquiry, must embrace, be hospitable to, and encourage the widest diversity of views within its own community… It cannot insist that all of its members favour a given view of social policy.

These words should be installed in 10-foot high neon in the office of every Vice-Chancellor in the country. And their universities should commit, publicly and non-negotiably, never to take a corporate stance, in any direction, on any political or social question. 

It's become de riguer among most leftwing/social activist circles to treat phrases like "diversity of views" as "providing a platform for Nazis", which is a red herring specifically designed to shut down debate or inquiry. After all, if there were only two points of views, the "correct" one and "being a Nazi", it isn't hard to see most people thinking it's best to avoid the latter, but it's dishonest, disingenuous and repugnant to treat queries of an ideological position as being akin to genocidal racial supremacy. However, post-modernist "anti-racists" continue to play the game of the Orwellian Marxist-Leninists who treated every opponent as if they were the worst possible people in the world, when in fact that was exactly what they were.

Te Pāti Māori list MP Debbie Ngarewa-Packer's line that you're either Tangata Whenua, Tangata Tiriti or a racist is a reflection of this. You're either racially (and ideologically) correct, ideologically correct or you're irredeemable. 

This reductive approach suits ideological tyrants who don't want to debate or discuss the merits of their position, which they see as philosophically moral and just, and any derogation from that line as being immoral or unjust. Why debate and discuss what is obviously right and just, unless the person debating is at best wrong, or at worst just wanting to oppress people?

It's an authoritarian philosophy that tolerates no dissent, it may tolerate questions for clarification, but anything beyond that is a leap from the just and righteous into the unjust and intolerable.  

Universities should let a "thousand-flowers" bloom, and should promote robust and resilient discussion and debate. If not, then they really are just sheep factories, like the universities seen in totalitarian countries, whereby ideology comes before inquiry. Universities should be places where people who are radical activists across the political spectrum, whether by identity, class, liberalism, the many strands of Marxism, but also religiously based philosophies, can speak, can collaborate and express themselves, and also be ready for responses to their beliefs and positions. 

The big question is who politically will stand up for universities being universal for the sake of students and the public, who own them? 

Remember Cultural Safety in nursing education?

This widely viewed Australian spoof about education isn't far from the mark:

This Ph.D thesis from Massey called "A Maori model of Primary Health Care Nursing" exemplifies this nonsense.  Take this gem:

Unfortunately, much of the present literature on which we rely to develop nursing curriculum, practice and health policies is presented, not only from a pakeha perspective but also with a strong
biomedical focus. This has proved to be of little use to Maori.

Post-modernist identity politics denies that modern medicine is of" little use" to people from a pre-modern culture.  Now I agree that being sensitive to the customs and beliefs of patients is entirely a sensible part of nursing, but this is simply treating people as individuals and customising providing services in ways that optimises their experience.  However, to treat medical science as being secondary or even almost dismiss it altogether is complete nonsense.

The insanity of not judging people's actions and capabilities as individuals, but as categorised groups, and the insanity of the denial of reality and objectivity are exactly what this little video identifies.  It's about time it was laughed at and challenged, because the philosophy and values behind it are not only irrational, but fundamentally corrosive to individual rights and freedoms to the point where, as in my previous post, those applying it become not only appeasers of fascism, but apply fascist techniques to their approach to any form of challenge.

The single biggest philosophical threat to our freedoms is not Islamism itself, nor a new generation of Marxism-Statism, but the entire edifice of post-modernist relativism and structuralism - for it is that which is hindering the policies and practices needed to confront the fascists from all sides.

So how far away from how things are is this?

Black and for school choice? You must be racist

So says the Louisiana Federation of Teachers.

The American Federation for Children (a lobby group promoting educational voucher programmes and tax credits to enable parents' taxes to follow the school they want their children to attend) reports that the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, an avowed opponent of school choice (presumably because it breaks their dominance of the profession and the single shop approach to negotiating pay) has tweeted that the Black Alliance for Education Options (BAEO), a group of African Americans who also support education vouchers/tax credits for private schools supports teaching that the KKK is good.

Yes.  A pro-Democrat, leftwing union claimed a black educational advocacy organisation endorsed the teaching of racism.

How did it come to this conclusion?  Who knows.  It simply tweeted this...

BAEO has responded and clarified...

Because some private schools enrolled in the program reportedly use texts that may attempt to downplay the awful history of the Ku Klux Klan, LFT (via twitter) called BAEO a "black organization that supports KKK vouchers." This is not only the most ludicrous description of our organization but it is also one of the most unintelligent. 

We unapologetically stand for parental choice. That doesn't mean that we believe every private school is great or that private schools are better than public schools. It simply means that while serious people go about the difficult and long-term work of trying to reform low-performing traditional public schools, we must also give parents real options that allow their children to get a quality education today. We trust that parents, when given the option to choose and when armed with accurate information, will make increasingly better choices for their children.

What I see is an interest group adopting any technique it can to smear those presenting options that threaten their position of privilege and lack of accountability.

The idea that a state monopoly on education and restrictions on access to schools only in a local area is good for children or what parents want is ludicrous, and it is little short of disgusting that teachers' unions - whose primary interest is to increase the pay, reduce the workload and reduce the accountability of teachers - continue to prey upon the vulnerable, weak and poor to demand that they maintain this monopoly on teaching their kids.  They fear new schools, dynamic ones, ones that pay teachers on performance, that hire teachers that aren't unionised into their collective gang, and that parents like them.  They fear not being able to lobby politicians to decide what those schools teach or what they should be paid.  They fear that, when given their own money back or given a way to transfer their taxes from public schools to other options, that they wont choose the options the teachers want monopolised.

They'll find every example they can of non-public schools not delivering the best performance, whilst ignoring the same of their monopoly schools, they will constantly claim that it's all about the children, that this is all they care about, all the time implying that they and the state knows best, not parents.  

Nothing is more important in pushing freedom and changing the culture of modern liberal democracies today than taking schools out of the hands of these peddlers of protectionism, hatred and statism.  That's why they, and their friends in politics (e.g. the Green Party in NZ), are so keen to oppose them.

For they argue private schools should remain for the rich, for the poor kids shouldn't get to go to a school which declares that individual achievement and excellence are the primary goal that should be strived for.

After all, what could be worse that kids from backgrounds that can't afford to pay taxes and private school fees, stand up and proudly live lives that aren't about dependence.

Identity politics lays down a path of Orwellian thought control

In the UK at the moment, one of the main news items is the criminal trial of Chelsea football club captain John Terry for allegedly making a racist comment to footballer Anton Ferdinand.

Terry isn't exactly a great thinker, and given that one of his contract conditions is not behave in such a manner, he certainly deserved to be reprimanded if guilty and be subject to whatever punishment is appropriate in that context.

However, now he faces criminal charges, essentially for hurting someone else's feelings.

In New Zealand, Dr Cat Pause (yes, imagine the university thesis on the psychology behind that name) not only embraces this, but wants a similar approach to be taken to discrimination on the basis of mass.  She is a taxpayer funded university lecturer at Massey (yes, agriculture clearly isn't enough), and her belief in criminalising make fun of obesity, in opposing businesses selling diets, exercise and in her hatred of the fashion industry.  She even hates the airline industry for not having wide enough seats for the obese.

She is hosting a conference on "fatism" and of course she has been the subject of the obvious jokes from Whaleoil.  It is easy to poke fun at someone with an amusing name who is seeking to normalise a condition that health professionals regard as dangerous and a key contributor to a vast range of chronic diseases, particularly a condition that is largely a matter of personal choice.  

However, I'm not laughing that much, because the wedge that has opened up the chance for taxpayers to fund discussion, debate and study into this perspective was created many years ago.  It's the embrace of identity politics, and its neo-Marxist, ultra-collectivised, power stereotyping that pigeon holes absolutely everyone into categories, whilst claiming it is actually about empowering people.

The conference Pause is leading demonstrates this:

Fat bodies politic: Neoliberalism, biopower, and the ‘obesity epidemic’ by Jackie Wykes

This paper will argue that the discursive construction of the ‘obesity epidemic’ mobilises neoliberal concepts of risk and responsibility to produce fat people as failed subjects across various sites of power, including capitalist production, profitability, and reproductive (hetero)sexuality.

In other words, "fatists" blames capitalism for creating a subjective "myth" around obesity as showing people as failures as productive individuals and as being fit to breed.   The existence of plenty of successful overweight people, men and women, is blanked out, because it doesn't fit the story being manufactured.   

Then there is this paper:

The role of diagnosis in marginalising corpulence by Annemarie Jutel

In this presentation, using overweight as a heuristic, I will describe the social model of diagnosis and how it assists us to understand contemporary attitudes to health, illness and disease.  At the same time I will explain how the ascendance of diagnosis and the paradigm of evidence based practice have forced the emergence of overweight as a disease category.

In other words because evidence is used to inform medicine, being overweight is seen as a disease.  Now I think it isn't a disease, because it can't be caught and it doesn't spontaneously emerge, but it is a "state of being".  People aren't born that way (unlike race and sex).  However, is it seriously being argued that medicine should not be evidence based?

It is easy to go on, but Cat Pause claims she is "promoting the idea that fat people deserve the same rights and dignity as non-fat people".

Yet there is no objective assessment of not having the same rights.  The rights she appears to want are demands upon the persons and property of others to make special provision for obese people.  Of course she has a precedent in this, in the "disabled rights" movement demanding accessibility and people to be made to pay for their private property to be accessible to people they don't know.  She claims airlines kick fat people off planes, and then demands that economy class have wider seats (although she pays for premium classes herself - which is the same point with better food anyway).

Of course she goes further.  She wants to criminalise "fat hatred"  Why?   "fat phobia, or fat stigma, or fat hatred, is harmful. It stigmatises fat people, which is harmful for both physical and mental health. It also affects non-fat people – making many of them terrified of becoming fat. Being shamed, or bullied, is never good for anyone"

It's Orwellian thought control, she wants it to be wrong for people to think it is wrong to be overweight, wrong to seek to change their bodies, wrong to sell goods or services to facilitate that.  She wants to criminalise people being hurt by what others say. 

 

Yet people don't have a right to not be insulted or hurt.  It is a fact of life.  A person throwing an insult because of how you look isn't nice, and isn't fun, but is it a matter for the criminal law?

Should the state be there to protect people from stigma, hatred, fear or shame?  

What is next?  The obvious next characteristic to pursue is hair colour.  Red headed people are probably sick of being called gingas, or being thought of as angry.  Blondes are probably sick of being presume to be ditsy, stupid or even slutty.  Should short and tall people demand "rights"?  How about people who wear glasses being thought of as being smart or geeky?  How about commenting about what people wear?

Those of us who embrace individualism and the treatment of people as individuals have no problem with the moral dimension of being open to who people are, what they think and what they do, but it does not mean surrendering the personal right to not have to surrender to what others want to claim from you.

If you own a business, should you not have the right to decide who you trade with, who you buy and sell from and who you employ?  Indeed, similarly as a consumer you should also be able to assert the right to buy from whomever you wish, and refuse to trade with those you don't wish to. 

Moreover, you do have a right to not like people.  There is a right to not be polite, to not be considerate and accommodating.  That doesn't mean using force or fraud, but it does mean you can blank out people, ignore them and yes, laugh at them. 

Sterilising expression and discourse by criminalising it is disturbing.  

It can be seen in the thin line between actions that insult Islam and Muslims who claim they are being "discriminated against" because they have beliefs that I, and billions of others, regard as peculiar or even evil.

It can be seen in the way that some people can throw around racist insults, promote racist policies without shame because the identity politics touters claim people of some races "can't be racist" - even Members of Parliament can be "oppressed".

Meanwhile, hatred of wealth creation, entrepreneurs and Christians is all allowed.

Human rights legislation banning discrimination should itself be struck off the books.  The proper response to racist and sexist activity by businesses is to boycott and shame them.  Indeed, if the fat women (and it is women) have a problem with how others treat them, then they can boycott, protest and the like.  That is entirely appropriate and the only way to really change behaviour, and to isolate those who are bigoted, rude or simply intolerant.

However, they and others should not claim a right to be treated a certain way by law by private businesses or individuals.  For those who do are as intolerant as those they seek to bully and force to treat them the way they demand.

In a free society we all have freedom of thought and freedom of expression, and that includes the right to say things other people don't like and to act on that basis as private individuals.  

Dr. Cat Pause and her gang of reality evading subjectivist post-modernists can create all of the fictional fantasy conspiracies, can proclaim victimhood and demand that people be forced to accommodate their demands, but for all of that they shouldn't be allowed to make people do what they want.

Her philosophy portrays itself as being about acceptance and tolerance, where it is about hatred and intolerance.  It is about reality denial and a grand claim upon the minds, mouths, pens, keyboards and deeds of everyone else.

It takes the right to be an individual and to live you life as you see fit, and morphs it into an artificially constructed "identity" with "oppression", "victimhood", an "interpretation of history" and as a result endless demands for taxpayers to be forced to pay for her studies and to investigate accommodating this self styled identity group, at the same time as taxpayers are being cajoled to deal with obesity as a key factor contributing to multiple chronic diseases (with children who are obese being a specific concern).

If it continues to get government support, then I propose that someone invent a "blonde studies" course and start doctoring up some post modernist snakeoil that would be easy for any half smart person to manufacture.   Then the "dim witted", "low IQ" and "not very smart" can claim the same, how they are insulted by being expected to know stuff.

The rest of us will be getting on with our lives.

Why do the Greens get such an easy ride? Part Two - 50 questions that should have been asked of the Greens

As I wrote previously, it appears the Greens are having a media honeymoon.  However, is this justified?  Do the Greens not have policies that could be seen as controversial?  Do their MPs not make statements that deserve further scrutiny?

Well I have composed a long list of questions I think journalists should ask, and more importantly questions YOU should ask your local Green candidate, especially if you are thinking about voting Green.   You may wonder if the Greens are quite so cuddly and inoffensive as the media makes them out to be.

So here it is - 50 questions to ask the Green Party (and one light-hearted one at the end)

My only other question is, why hasn't anyone else been asking them?...

Does your Treaty of Waitangi policy that “All claimants to have the opportunity to have their land and resources returned to them” include claims of private land?  If not, why is that not clear?

Do the Greens still believe Sue Kedgley’s claim that it is wrong to “shift responsibility for health and improving diets from the state to society and to convince people that public health is all about personal responsibility"?  If so, how do see the state leading responsibility for people changing their diets, how would the state adequately replace personal responsibility?

What are “all reasonable steps to prevent immigration numbers and the sale of land to rich immigrants from having an adverse impact on Aotearoa/NZ and its Taonga.”?  How can they have an adverse impact?  What is a rich immigrant?  What will an immigrant do to land than a locally born New Zealander wouldn't? 

How does the Green Party plan to implement its policy to ”Minimise exposure to electromagnetic radiation especially for children and pregnant women”?  How many TV and radio stations would you shut down?  Will you want to close wifi networks at schools and home?  Will you demand children and pregnant women not use laptops, TVs or any other electrical appliance?  Will you demand all homes with children and pregnant women to be outside mobile phone coverage?  Does the party understand how pervasive EMR is and has been for decades?  Does it understand that visible light is electromagnetic radication, and if not, how can anyone trust the Greens on science in other fields?

Do the Greens still believe it is ok to frighten people about non-ionising radiation from mobile phone towers, despite the complete absence of evidence about negative health effects? Is it appropriate for the leader of a major political party to engage in name calling when someone calls him out on not scaremongering Radio NZ transmitter sites, which emit more of the same type of radiation and have done so for decades?

Do the Greens still believe there is a media conspiracy against them on this issue because telcos advertise in the media? What evidence do they have of this?  Could it just be that your science is extremely flimsy and the media refuses to engage with such ignorance?

Do the Greens trust potatoes still, or do they stand by Jeanette Fitzsimon’s press release of 1999 that it was then "the last Xmas when you could trust potatoes"?  Wasn’t all of the fuss over genetic engineering in 2002 just scaremongering?  How many people have been killed, hurt or harmed by genetic engineering anywhere in the world? 

What do the Greens mean about  “Recognise ancestral land ownership in rural areas” for Maori?  Why shouldn’t private land owners in rural areas be worried?  What will you stop them doing?  What isn't recognised now?

What did Catherine Delahunty mean when she said that the Pakeha nation is "racist"?  Does she stand by her use of the term “genocidal spindoctors” to describe National Party speechwriters in 2005?  Does she stand by her hope that Maori will be the largest cultural grouping in New Zealand by the late 21^st century?  Is this also Green policy?  Why is it that other parties don't care about the ethnic composition of the country?

When Catherine Delahunty said “We have plenty of beaten women; gutted communities and whanau living in state housing that have never had proper electricity or water supplies. But lots of Pakeha are drinking wine and surfing, and they say so loudly without saying a word, would you please shut up about the connection between racism and poverty” is she blaming Pakeha for Maori women being beaten up?  Why are Pakeha who drink wine and surf to blame for beaten women?

Do the Greens agree with Catherine Delahunty when she describes Pakeha as having "colonial privilege" even if they were born in New Zealand?  At what point can Pakeha be described by Catherine Delahunty as being equal to Maori as New Zealand citizens with equal rights, if ever?  Do you think Pakeha voters of the Greens know that you believe that?

Do the Greens agree with Kennedy Graham when he said “The political rights we enjoy today are to be calibrated by the responsibility we carry for tomorrow.”?  What political rights does he think should be “calibrated” and what does he mean by that?  When he said “Individual freedoms are no longer unlicensed, but henceforth subordinate to the twin principles of survival and sustainable living”, what freedoms do the Greens want to “licence”?  What individual freedoms must be subordinate?

Don’t the Greens think Kennedy Graham flying to London to discuss climate change at taxpayers’ expense is remarkably hypocritical?  How many more long haul flights will Green MPs seek to undertake to support fighting climate change and why?

Does the Green Party still share the view of Sue Kedgley that “We need to challenge the doctrine of free trade and accept that people's right to food, to be free from hunger, must have priority over an ideological fixation on allowing market forces to prevail at all costs” so abandoning New Zealand’s long standing bi-partisan trade policy goal of opening up markets to its agricultural products?  Does it share her view supporting the official French policy to effectively continue the EU’s highly subsidised highly protectionist Common Agricultural Policy?  Does it believe that free trade actually really means highly subsidising exports?  If so, why? What future do the Greens see in New Zealand's farming sector if farmers face a world that is protectionist, subsidised and engaging in "food sovereignty" policies?  

Why is it good value for taxpayers to have spent $1.3 billion on a railway that private companies would only have paid a quarter of that for?  Why do you think the private sector hasn't bothered investing in it, despite you being convinced of "peak oil" and that the end of mass use of the private car and road transport is nigh?

Do the Greens still think that it was appropriate to blame the Brisbane floods on climate change linked to the coal exported from Queensland, as if Queensland was getting its just desserts?

How do the Greens think that making membership of student unions voluntary “takes away choices”?  Isn’t it the exact opposite?  Would you think differently of student unions if they had been  hot beds of free market capitalist and pro-entrepreneurial activism?  Doesn't this make you claims about believing in human rights superficial?

The Greens want to force electricity companies to generate a proportion of their power from expensive renewable sources.  In the UK a similar policy is estimated to be putting up prices by an average of 50% in real terms by 2020, with a fully privatised sector. How much will this policy of renewables put up power prices to New Zealanders? 

When Metiria Turei says “We need to get smokes out of our homes and out of our shops” what will you do to achieve this? Do you really want to stop the sale of tobacco products altogether? Why don’t you have the same attitude towards marijuana?  Why don’t you think tobacco smokers should be left alone? 

Do the Greens still believe Don Brash wants to smash Maori culture and force women to be subservient?  Do you have any evidence for such exagerrated claims?

How will the Greens “Support equitable access for Māori to secure employment and decent wages”? How do Maori not have equitable access?  Who is stopping them? 

Do you think Maori can be racist? Why do you think people of Maori descent should be given different political structures from those of other citizens? Why do you think this should be constitutionally entrenched?  Why should the accident of your birth determine how the state interacts with or consults with you?

How does offering Maori the same democratic rights as all other citizens shut them out of participation?

What examples do the Greens have of “unnecessary production and consumption”, and how do they propose to curb them?  Will this mean banning the production and sale of certain goods?  If so, what ones?

What products will be banned when the Greens implement their policy to  “Require domestic and imported products to be durable and recyclable”? Does this mean every producer of goods that are neither will be regulated out of business?  Does this mean no New Zealander could import a product that is neither durable nor recyclable?  Doesn't this ban anything perishable?

What exactly is "hugely harmful" to the public in private companies being contracted by local government to manage water services?  Where in the world has this proven to be the case?

Does the Green party still believe all of the Cuban government’s claims that its health care system is fantastic?  Is it in the habit of believing the official reports of one party states that imprison political dissidents as mental patients?  Why is Cuba exempt from the sort of scrutiny on human rights that the Greens apply to China or Burma?

Why do the Greens think parental choice of schools is a myth?  Why do they think the state always knows what’s best in education?

When you want to “Ensure all new houses and buildings fully comply with disability access requirements unless specifically exempted.”  Will this mean anyone building a house on a hill about a road having to build a ramp or lift unless they get a special exemption from a bureaucracy?  Wont this make it prohibitively expensive to build homes anywhere that isn't on flat land adjacent to a road?  Wont this just increase the price of homes and reduce the supply?

When the Greens want to regulate broadcasting and the press with an authority that will “have the power to impose appropriate sanctions against media outlets in cases where it can be clearly demonstrated that it has exhibited wilful or negligent abuse of power and by doing so has either visited material harm on another party or pursued its own self-interest at the expense of the public interest.”, what examples of the media pursuing its own self interest do they have in mind? Doesn’t this mean introducing newspaper censorship in New Zealand for the first time in decades?

Why do the Greens fear foreign investment?  Do you share this fear of New Zealanders owning land and businesses in other countries, if not why not?  Why do you want to welcome refugees and migrants from all and sundry, but if anyone from another country wants to own a business, you treat them like the devil?

More specifically, what was the security threat posed by a Canadian company buying a New Zealand airport?  Should the British government be fearful that New Zealand company Infratil owns Prestwick Airport near Glasgow for the same reasons?

The Greens repeatedly criticise the trade choices made by New Zealanders in such banal terms as “swapping water with China”.  What exports do the Greens want stopped? What imports do they want stopped? Why do they think they know best what people should sell and buy?

Does the party’s support for taxpayer funding of the voluntary sector not make it the state sector?  Why should taxpayers be forced to support political advocacy groups?

What are the implications of “Requiring the inclusion of environmental science and ethics in all study programs.” involving science education?  Why is this relevant to physics for example?

What does “Support legislation that increases the reliability of the Internet” mean?  How do the Greens propose improving the reliability of a disaggregated global network by a law passed in New Zealand?  Can you pass laws to fix most problems?

Why do the Greens think that if central government doesn’t tell primary schools how to teach arts,science, technology, or physical education, that the schools are incapable ofknowing what or how to teach?  Does only the Ministry of Education know how to write a curriculum?

How many other traffic laws do the Greens endorse breaking besides walking on a motorway?

Do the Greens still stand by the view of Sue Kedgley that heavy freight be forced to go by rail?  Do the Greens still believe it is ok for their MPs to make speeches that are full of errors, hyperboles and misrepresentations?

Does Russel Norman still think that if customers of a shop want plastic bags, the shop shouldn’t offer them?  How is that democratic decision making?

Does Russel Norman stick to his belief that the London riots were caused by poverty, not opportunistic criminals seeking designer goods and electronics?

Do the Greens support the view of their blogger “Toad” that democracy doesn’t have to be secular, or liberal, and that it’s “ok” if democracies start a war if the people support it?  In which case, would the Greens support a Christian theocratic state that sent troops to Iran if it was democratically elected?

If the Greens think there should be fruit in schools, why don’t they set up a charity to raise money for it?  In fact, why don’t they ever advocate people raise money themselves voluntarily rather than make taxpayers pay?

When you expect that “significant time for environmental education” will be included in the teacher training curriculum, what should be excluded from the curriculum to allow for this?

Why do you think small business owners should be criminalised because they want to open on a religiously based public holiday?  How do owner-operator shops with no employees exploit people by merely opening their shops for people to choose to enter?

Why is it that a New Zealand Government following the US when a Republican is a President is “imperialism” but when a Democrat is a President, New Zealand should follow the US which is “leading the way”? Isn't it just about what policies you like and dislike? 

Why do you dismiss electric cars so flippantly, but treat electric trains as being the saviour to all of Auckland’s transport problems?  What proportion of trips in Auckland do you expect will be by train by 2014?

Do the Greens still support a Hamilton-Auckland train service, even though it would be slower than a bus, lose money and the local authorities wont pay for it? 

What’s Green about banning foreign ships that happen to be going from port to port within New Zealand as part of an international voyage, from selling empty space to carry cargo around New Zealand –when the ships would still be sailing regardless?  Isn't that policy just about pleasing militant  maritime unions?

The Greens paint a picture of the environment getting worse,and Russel Norman selectively quotes the Environment 2007 report from the Ministry for the Environment to support stopping road building, even though the report does not say that and provides plenty of facts that are inconvenient such as “Home heating is the main cause of air pollution in populated areas in the winter”  yet the Greens beat up on cars and trucks. The report also said  “Levels of PM10 particulates at roadside locations in Auckland appear to have fallen over the past 10 years”.  Why does a party that purports to be about the environment ignore good news about it?

Do any of you laugh at Catherine Delahunty’s tweets too? Like “Despite the pretty words and new clothes am hoping new puppy at white house will stop killing afghanis and funding Israel wars on Palestine"?

So ask yourself if the Greens DO get around 10% of the vote on Saturday, how much they might have got if a few of those questions had been asked over the campaign, or the past few years, and why the mainstream media seems to have its tongue up the Green Party's proverbial.  Moreover, ask yourself why the National Party hasn't been doing that - is it because it has seen this party as a partner?  If you're planning to vote National, how will you feel if that is exactly what happens?

P.S.  Go here, register instantly and tick an up for this post if you like what you see, it seems the obvious people have been doing the opposite (and I have inspired over 100 comments there).