If cultural appropriation is real . . . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aynfMtX0fiY


If cultural appropriation is real then it always was an atrocity. Therefore the aficionados thereof must go back through history to purge the art of the past of said vile evil.

Of course the very notion of cultural appropriation is absurd. Those who espouse this are looking for something to be angry at for in a soul so jaded as this only anger and hate can move it to any kind of heat. And how much more satisfying they think it when the cause in whose name  they are angry  can be identified, no matter how irrationally, as righteous

Mozart did culturally appropriate music from the Turks, namely the Ottoman Empire, whose music was all the rage in Vienna in the late 18th century.

The cross fertilisation of cultures is how cultures grow.

But it really is bizarre that they want multiculturalism, calling "Diversity" a strength when it merely corrodes the unity of a nation, yet refuse to allow the cultures to interact, screaming "appropriation!!" when they do

Truly it seems to me that  liberal guilt has become liberal self hatred but with the added problem that like all missionary minds they have to inflict this self hatred on everyone else

I submit that every person who follows this link to the Turkish March by Mozart will know the piece.  It is one of the few classical pieces recognizable by everyone, even if they cannot identify the work or composer

Hopefully those who listen to this rendition of the March will also recognise the arrogant absurdity of Political Correctness pushed to this degree.

That they think they should push  to this degree shows how absurd they are. But if they have not that only shows how lazy and inconsistent they are.

Puritans without a religion are as dangerous as those with one. And make no mistake, the Social Justice Warrior who is none of the components of his title, being a spoiled child with a grudge looking for something to be angry at, and the rest of the PC brigades, are nothing but latter day Puritans.

And of course knowing nothing of history except where they rewrite it to justify their self hatred and oikophobia, are dangerous.

Any attempt to make a Utopia is dangerous

On Church Creeds

Church creeds have been useful. In an age where people could not read and when Bibles were so rare that most had no access to them because the price of hand copying a book was prohibitive reciting a Creed at Mass or Service every Sunday was a useful way of teaching people doctrine. But in my considered opinion the abuse of creeds is something that outweighs their value. So I oppose Creeds So why do I oppose creeds? Not because they profess to believe something, not because they offer purported truth, but because they are legalistic repressive devices. How many will confess their unbelief as sin to God after having recited a church creed where they stated as truth something they in fact do NOT believe?  Clearly a creedal statement makes a hypocrite of a person. For commitment to a doctrine is not the same thing as believing it. This is the kind of intellectualism which is the very essence of hypocrisy. After 40 years a Christian I now know how utterly jam packed with heresy and unbelief I am. I am learning that my commitment to doctrine is intrinsically dishonest; and so my refusal to admit to God what my life shows what I really believe only complicates things and delays my healing. For my pain stems from my unbelief, from my legalism, which his unbelief, and my clinging by brute force to doctrines of grace, which in fact is nothing to do with what scripture commands when it says hold fast to what good. Rather such is the counterfeit, the abuse of the command. As I discovered years ago my legalism is no remedy to any sin at all. It is a symptom of the sin it fights. In fact it is the very sin it fights for if I truly believed in the love of God or His forgiveness I would rest in it without strain. The strain is force is therefore force, so is unbelief, not faith. The same goes for legalism of thought or belief as it does for legalism of action. Only the unwilling heart has to force itself to do good works; only the unbelieving mind has to force itself to strain to hold to true doctrine Our fruit are very revealing as to what we really believe. If we do not have peace rest and joy we do not believe the gospel, for all our commitment to the doctrines Here I am not denying doctrinal truth as a matter considered principle. Far from it! For I assert that it was the grace of God that got me to even consider the fact of my unbelief let alone face it. Of course He does this  that eventually He might produce repentance of sin leading to real belief rather than that which I have, (except for the barest minimum which makes  me a Christian in the first place) which  belief is  forced and feigned. For me to recite any church creed  would be sheer hypocrisy and I would not do it. What shows what we believe? OUR LIVES - by which I do not mean any forced good work, but our spontaneous reactions and careless words. Look at those and we see what our creeds are really worth, which is why we prefer to focus on mere propositional truth  lest our responses to such be revealed. it is not for nothing that to the world "church" and "hypocrite" are synonymous. If we want abundant lives, as Jesus both promised and commanded that we have, let us face the unbelief whereby we are without rest peace or joy. Let us face our unbelief, or, more importantly, let us be in a relationship with the Spirit that He will lead us to face it In so doing we will find love, joy and peace, the real thing not the feigned will of the flesh counterfeit which we so vainly call discipleship. For if we will not do this under the tutelage of the Holy Spirit we will be the tree that never bears fruit. And Jesus Himself warns us as to the fate of it

S

When will the Killing Start?

The radical Left have always been Utopians.

They believe that Man is perfectible, therefore they are committed to the means of making man better - not to the betterment of his material state  - but are committed to  the changing of his nature.

But this is the essence of totalitarianism.

This is because in order to change men to the extent they require the Leftists  must take over everything required to produce this:, education, social interactions - the feminist need to control all interactions between men and women by legal fiat as an example of this and proof that feminism itself is a totalitarian ideology - indeed they must take over all of society in order to effect this re education.

I found on the Internet some time ago the origin of the term totalitarian. It made chilling reading

"Everything within the State, Nothing outside of the State, Nothing against the State." This term was coined by either Mussolini or one of his associates.

And what has the State to do with this? They seek to do this by law and how else but through the coercive mechanism of the State.

That is why the feminist dictum the personal is the political is so dangerous -  among other things It blurs the  distinction between the public and private, allowing the State to interfere in the private lives of persons.

"Everything within the State, Nothing outside of the State . . . . "

the thing is the human heart cannot be reeducated. it cannot even be commanded, The purpose of the Law God, incidentally, was not to command the heart of Man, although imperative language was used, it was something else, as I have dealt with  or will deal with elsewhere on this blog .

Globalism, which is part of Leftist Utopianism,  thinks that what they call "diversity" and "inclusion"  will have all the communities of humanity come together around the campfire of the world and sing kumbaya.

this is fuelled by sheer sentimentality, and their advocacy of such nonsense is nothing but virtue signalling by those too lazy to learn some history.

what it will do is put the cats of all men in a sack and throw it in a river. chaos will result. they hope to end war by ending difference. but people are different and so they will fight.

they always have and they always will

Mass immigration is in the same category.  Even if the prosperous nations should share their well being with the poorer, people will, as a matter of plain fact,  resent mass influxes of foreigners, fearing, rightly or wrongly , that such will steal their jobs and disrupt their way of life. and it is seen that many of these migrants have no intention of assimilating, and in the case of Muslim immigration to the West, enclaves  of such, not finding the prosperity they hoped for, will become radicalised and produce its own crop of terrorists

this is all deplorable but the leftist solution is much, much worse.

The thing is God required the nations to be separate. In the Babel account, Genesis chapter 11, God sundered the languages of Man as man would not disperse. They were disperse for God knew what great evil will arise when Man unites. This is on the way to happening and the ultimate defiance of this will be the final one world government of the Beast

totalitarian regimes have always thought that they could force others to think what they think, with only contempt for opposing views.

We see this in such violence and bigotry from the Left these days, the thugs of Antifa and feminist hooligans disrupting meetings of MRA

But some totalitarian regimes have been Right Wing, the Nazis for example. But now the Left is fully on board with this utterly illiberal agenda

We should love one another?

Indeed. But do we? Have we ever?

Just read some history or look at the news, or simply use your own eyes and see what is in front of them.

An attempt to force what is foreign to human nature will always fail spectacularly proportionate to the amount of effort invested in it.

I know this from personal experience as I tried to change my self in accordance, I so blindly thought, to the Law of God.

So what we have is an ideology so opposed to human nature that though some will submit and devoutly try to produce the appearance required by feminism, identity politics, diversity, globalism etc (and appearance is all they can do) there are some who know full well that they cannot and will not live under such in ideology.

So they must be got rid of, especially if they resist reeducation.

A former friend of mine, a leftist, told me in all seriousness that there were some people she did not want living on this planet any more. I was chilled and horrified by the illiberal cruelty of one who thinks herself a kind and liberal person.

So, to the title of this piece

when will the killing start?

It has happened before, as under Stalin and Pol Pot, and even Lenin believed in shedding rivers of blood. and on the Right for his Utopian vision was of a return to an idealised and thus non existent traditional past, Adolf  Hitler

Any PC "liberal" who blindly thinks that true and peaceful unity will be produced d by political or social fiat should look inwards and try to change themselves. When they have failed they would, if they had any humility or sense, know that if they cannot change themselves they cannot change others. So their Utopian dream is both false and dangerous. As they all are

The world is evil, all of us. and it is still the case that unless we repent we will perish.

All of us


I must made a concluding note.

I am no Rightist. The Right always has been the party of the deceitfulness of riches. But it is a testimony to the thoroughgoing rot and madness of the Left that the Right simply makes more sense most of the time than the Left does, yet not to the rectitude of the Right.

God's kingdom is not of this world.

I will not be of its politics, for politics is the art of the possible as conceived by the contemptible for politics is the art of trying to live without God - especially when His named is blasphemed by being invoked, a sin the Right is often given to.

And living without God makes all of us contemptible

The Nations, Patriotism and the Left/Right Divide - brief

I am a  christian. Why am i not a patriot? Because the Bible says that i am a foreigner in this world, my citizenship is in heaven, the world - the whole world -  is in opposition to God,  the nations are insignificant drops in the bucket. I am commanded to behave myself that the gospel of christ be not discredited because of me and my loyalty is to God - or at least should be and i am repenting of the shortfall as it arises -  and  not to anything else. and as Jesus said no man can serve two masters - not that he ought not do so but that it was an impossibility - how can one be a patriot as well as a Christian? Loving my neighbour is one thing, indeed it is one thing patriots are significantly lacking in when they have such contempt for the poor among their own countrymen. So their love for their country is an abstraction, an idea, in fact it is an idol, the very sin of idolatry

As for the conservative /liberal question: the love of Christ is so rare that it is not traditional for the trad forms of church religion are without this love and always have been . Indeed biblical agape love is so radical that the conservatives cannot accept it any more than atheist Leftists can - and the conservatives certainly cannot produce it. But I will give the Left one tiny measure of credit. As most of them seem to me to be atheists they do not so easily blaspheme the Name of God by invoking it to back their political schemes as so many of the Right are wont to do So I am no patriot and no conservative, but I am no longer a leftist either. For I come to reject totally the notion that Man is perfectible, which is the very staple of Leftist thought. I regard my shift here as that which God wills and leads

Equal Rights

If you believe in equal rights for men AND women you become an antifeminist



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ofbYMFLHzY&t=989s

Feminism is a movement seeking privilege for women. not equality, and is based on such egregious errors that I can only hold these errors to be lies  consciously propounded by their theorists

I have rejected feminism

I have rejected feminism.

I was a feminist, or, as I called it, a feminist sympathiser, for some 40 years. I called  myself a sympathiser because I held that as  no man could ever know what it is like to be a member of that most utterly oppressed class, namely, women,  then I had no right to call myself a feminist.

My rejection happened just on a year ago, August 2017. The Documentary film The Red Pill, by Cassie Jaye, is what finally did it to me.

But by far the most formidable mind I have ever encountered on this subject is Karen Straughan. Her use of logic is ferocious, and I  offer the below link to her searing insight.

I may write more of my own on this issue later




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQWoNhrY_fM

naming the antichrist

People have been seeking to name the Antichrist for centuries, even millennia. Of course they have always got it wrong. I believe that they have approached the issue from the entirely wrong angle. Prophecy is not given that we can set dates. I have already argued on this one, and in my opinion naming names for the Man of Sin when he is not yet here is much the same species of unbelief. I contend that it is not faith to need to know who he is beforehand, but rather presumption Rather than trying to figure out who the Antichrist is beforehand we should wait till something is done which will confirm his role and then look at who he is. This, i assert, is precisely what the data given in scripture is for, to help us to recognise who is is when he arrives and not before, so that we may respond to him properly when, if he is not arrived, there is no need to such a response That is to say we should turn the whole enterprise on its head and wait for an occurrence which will say "HEY THERE! PAY ATTENTION!"  Now that will at least be the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem because until there is a Temple in Jerusalem there will be no means of stopping a sacrifice which has not started yet. I know there is talk among religious Jews of rebuilding said temple, but i am quite sure that God Almighty, having declared its significance, will actively prevent its rebuild until he decides the time is right In other words - and this is the bedrock of my belief on this matter - no Temple, no proper time. So speculation is pointless and indeed is a sin. So until the Temple is rebuilt much talk on end times is empty speculation. I have long held that wondering on who the beast is is a blasphemous exercise. \ It also leads to further ridicule of the name of Christ when we make bold utterances which are proven false. It is best that we refrain, but, no, alas we usually will not learn this, and so continue or folly I will repeat here that we were not given data to identify him beforehand, we were given data to recognise  him WHEN, having arrived, HE DOES CERTAIN THINGS. Scripture after all does say take no thought for tomorrow for sufficient to the day is the evil thereof. We will deal with the Beast when he gets her and not before. And if some things are done which indicates he is the Beast I will take a look at who the world leader is who stops the sacrifice, declares himself God, when he does it, and not before, if I am not already martyred by him. If he is a Syrian Muslim, well and good, but if he is an eastern roman Jew, once commonly held as a view before 9/11 also well and good. Until then eschatology is a comparative sideshow  and too much interest in it can be idolatrous. i do not regard it as absurd that i will be dead and buried of old age before the temple is rebuilt now that i am nearly 60 and have been a Christan for nearly 40 years. It is the time to repent of our sins, wait on the Lord and be led by His spirit  NOW  It is still the case we are to walk in the Spirit now and let tomorrow take care of itself. If we are so focused on the ultimate of final days as to forget the leading of the Spirit her and now our endeavour will be wasted work, for to ignore the Spirit too may times is to fall away to perdition

To readers: please help.

I have received a notification from the site this blog resides in about a change in European Union Law requiring some notification about cookies to be shown. Not being part of the EU I cannot see this notification.

I have no patience with the tech side of things. It seems that the notice should be seen by people viewing my blog from within the EU. But I can not figure out how to see if it is there

Please notify me if you can, or cant see such a notice,  by replying  as a comment .

I would rather not be in infringement of law if I could avoid it

Politics and the abuse of Good Ideas

If evil people get hold of a good idea does it not stand to reason that they will abuse and distort it to their own selfish purposes?

Before I answer who the evil people in question are  or might be i will talk about some good ideas that  are or may be subject to such abuse.

The Left have the good idea that people should care for one another and help each other, for no man is an island.

The Right  believe that individuals should take responsibility for themselves.

I would say that both are good ideas, but as selected by both wings of the political spectrum they are forced into a false dichotomy which is simply not logically required.

So who are the evil people that would abuse such ideas?

Scripture is clear. There is none righteous, no not one. Jesus, by way of a casual throw away line, while talking about the gift of God said to his disciples "if you being evil, can give good gifts to your children . . . . " Matthew 7:11

He took the evil of men for granted.

As regards politics what do we see?

That men should look out for one another became a license for mass murder under Marxism. For what was to be done with those deemed unwilling to do so? And now people foolishly want the State to do everything for them, not only keep then fed and sheltered, a requirement I, as a former Leftist might still find valid, but to give their empty lives meaning and happiness, and if the government cannot do this they expect the governments of the Left these days to punish  those who dare afflict their feelings, hence the madness which is Political Correctness. And they think that the nature of Man can be remade, re educated, to change man into something better. Such Utopian fantasies are always totalitarian

That men should be responsible for their own welfare morphed into "I'm OK, to hell with you ,mate."
Any kind of justice in the cried of the poor  is written off as the politics of envy, as Jim Bolger, former New Zealand Prime Minister did back in the 1990's after the welfare state was severely cut in this country. He either had no clue as to the plight of the poor, or did not want to have any clue of such. Scripture calls this the deceitfulness of riches where by a rich man  thinks he got rich by his own moral merit and thus his wealth is a sign of his own righteousness. There is very little in this world which is more foul than such an attitude. and of course the purpose of preaching individual responsibility is to keep the workers at their benches

Now I am a generous man, when both sides  of the spectrum hurl accusations to each other I agree with them all, except where logic render them contradictory.

Because all are evil and all abuse  everything in some way or another - even if only by means of  making an idol out of it to ignore God the Spirit - it follows that it is empty self righteousness for a political party or wing to accuse the other side of being evil while trumpeting either by word or attitude that they themselves are not, for all are evil.

Thus political factionalism is always self righteous, arrogant and just plain foolish

some parties are more evil than others perhaps?

Well, perhaps indeed. But do we vote for the lesser evil?

that empowers the lesser evil if they win the election, and as power corrupts they become a greater evil than previously.

It might in the short term be saner to have a lesser evil in power, but only in the short term, and the debasement of all political parties, to be met by the self righteous naivete of new parties who think they will be different - truly there is nothing new under the sun!  will indeed continue

Of course the corruption might only be a conceit and arrogance of a Prime Minister who has been in office for too long - and be assured I myself have seen this in my own country of New Zealand, but would that we could be so lucky as to have evils only come singly instead of clusters, as they always do

So what is the solution?

The Age of Reform, as I might call it, starting in the 18th century, is coming to an end as the reforms themselves unravel. and they unravel because or  giving you neighbour a fair break is contrary to human nature and humans can only pretend against their own selves for so long.

My parents' generation were lucky enough to live under the humane reforms of this Age of Reform at its very peak. My parents were too young for world War II and had a lifetime of prosperity  previously undreamed of until their deaths in 2007 and 2009 respectively. And they were not wealthy, but working class all their lives

This state of affairs is now unravelling and I need point to no evidence for what is plainly visible.

It is said, often by those who really should know better, that all it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.

If true then evil will triumph. And indeed it will. For there are no good people. I like to say that if I ever met a good person I would kick his backside and tell him to get moving, he has a world to save. But I speak in ironic jest, for there really are none.

God Himself will let Man drink the cup of his rebellion to the bitter dregs, and at some point He will remove or allow to be removed whatever it is that restrains (2 Thessalonians 2:1-4)  Man from  the full viciousness of his own nature.

And when in this instance all hell is let loose this will be the Great Tribulation and Christ will return only at the end of it.

Get involved in politics and be corrupted by it? Ignore politics and suffer at the hand of those  contemptible or naive people who still enter it? Try to fight a rearguard action as the engineers in the Titanic did whose effort at the pumps kept the ship afloat for some 2 and a half hours?
Well this last assumes that Law is the solution to man's predicament, which it never was. To demonstrate this  fact so deeply denied by men, all ,men, for i a m convinced that legalism it is which is the way that leads to death , (Proverbs 14:12) this was the very reason God gave the Law in the first place. And of course there is still the price of corruption to be paid. Is it to be said that no greater love had a man, or woman,  for his nation that he gave his life to the political process that he be corrupted by it all while holding back great evil?

As the saying goes, damned if you do, damned if you don't. There is no solution whatsoever not when the solutions - liberal democracy - are falling apart before our very eyes

So what remains?

the classic gospel,

Repent and believe and be led by the Spirit

PC Demands for Native Pronunciation

Political correctness in my home land is going to the extent of now demanding correct pronuncation of Maori - our indigenous people - place names. A voice artist hit local headlines just today for refusing to pronounce such names as Waimate "the white way" calling such racist. We say Why Mat ee. The Maori way is something i cannot produce here though I am , I believe competent enopugh to say it as they require, if I saw the point

So I wrote to our country's Maori language comission, an august body set up to oversee the development  of Te Reo Maori  - the Maori Language

Sirs,

well might i approve your support of the voice artist refusing to pronounce the name waimate the white way as appeared on todays MSN news feed.

But i would encourage you to apply this fine principle consistently. If it is low level racism to mispronounce Waimate or Hauraki it is surely by the same principle racism to mispronounce Paris . It is Paree with the r slightly rolled. Moscow is Mosk va – stress  on the second syllable. Berlin is Bare Leen, Nuremberg is Nourn berg – very very careful attention being paid to the umlaut, which my computer cannot  produce, over the u in the name. Rome is Roma. Warsaw is Varshawa  and don’t get me started on names really out of the European comfort zone like the proper form of Jerusalem – Yaru Shalayim.  And perhaps if we were to listen to native Cockneys then London is Lunnin

Let us not confine ourselves to being Politically Correct over  local Maori place names, lest that be seen to be selectively racist in its own light. You want a sacrifice of effort over Maori place names? then be prepared to make it over other place names

Of course you see the irony here.

Demands to pronounce place names are in fact coerced speech; and coerced speech is tyranny.

If you as native English speakers cannot master the correct pronunciation of Paris etc  you grasp my point. Not only that but you manifest it. Native English speakers cannot get Maori place names either and your demand that they do, being inconsistent, is mere petulant

You do not get a genuine sense of national identity by coercion and your petulant demands will alienate many

By the way, lest you think me a racist, the common mispronunciation of Maori as Mari bothers me. I like to say I have in fact met a Mari person. She came from the autonomous republic of Mari El, one of the regions of Russia, properly called Rossiya, some 300 miles east of Moskva. But then i have no intention of forcing this on anyone

in  celebration of my own European roots i beg the honour or remaining your most obedient and humble servant

Stephen Meikle  ( that would be Stefanos to you for the name is Greek)

I do have some Maori ancestry but do you think i would rejoice in that when you want to foist by force of law Maori culture on people. Consider it

Christchurch

28 04 2018

END EMAIL

These are of coure first world problems from people in enough luxury  and wealth to now demand that their feelings be regarded as sacred by our viewing things sacred that they do. Of course they regard white culture with contempt and loathe christianity, but flatly refuse to see the racism in their own demands, for they define racism as only  white hating - or only didsagreeing with, for to them that is hatred -  black

I will some time soon, as the mood takes me, do a piece on why i am not politically correct

How Do I Know that I Believe

I have always been given to philosophic rumination, so the question of what is belief, as opposed to knowledge,  and how do I know I believe something, given the nature of the sin of unbelief,  has worried me for a long time.

But it now occurs to me that I will  know that I believe something  when  it becomes to my mind simply the way things are, almost  - but perhaps only almost - something to be taken for granted as regards it s propositional truth.

I hold this to be the case with any belief, this, I submit,  by being  the nature of belief, for I am not considering the TRUTH of any belief in this instance. Just the nature of it.

But as regards true christian belief, a different matter, I agree,  it will be something that I no longer have to pick at, worry about, be quick to defend, or even talk about very often. Unless it fills me with joy, of course.

It will be my life  but not my obsession, no longer driven by the guilt ridden awareness of my own deep seated unbelief.

I contend that  I see this in many preachers and even apologists. It is a waste of both time and effort for if they are to grow in Christ they will have to acknowledge the unbelief and thus their wasted efforts to reach honest belief and the peace that comes from it

Of course as regards spiritual things I get there by being  convicted of the sins of my own resistance to the thing in question and then by His grace as my counsellor, one on one, to repent of them.

I have found this a process over time, for it is a quarrel between God and me which I must  engage in and indeed go through lest I hide my sin and perish.

In this instance it is a particular idol that has ruled my life so strongly that  prefer it to the love of the Father.

As I repent as led by the Spirit my thinking will be changed, as I now suspect  is the nature of  belief  itself  as I have described it above.

Intellectual assent to a proposition, what so many Christians call faith, is nothing of the sort. it is the bare beginning.

But the goal is to be transformed by the renewal of the mind

The Most Hated Sin

There is an old dictum that the sin most hated by a preacher is the one he is most beset with

I know a preacher who is obsessed with homosexuality and atheism. Why would he be if he were not busily repressing these things  in himself out of  his own guilt and fear?  He is also so afraid of the occult that he forces himself to bypass the daily horoscope he told me he sees in the daily newspaper. That is to say he takes such nonsense seriously, so is in fact some kind of occultist.

He is also very cruel,. a bully who thinks he has the right to terrorize people into conversion.  He has said so while preaching in my own hearing. But he does not believe his cruelty is sin, so he does not hate it

The point is that if one hates a sin one does not have to practice that sin to be a sinner in that area. To repress it is to still be it.

How do I know these things  to be true?

I have hated hypocrisy all my life. But I am a legalist.

Therefore I am a master hypocrite.

And I have hated cruelty all my life. But I nurse the most vicious vengeance fantasies  against those who have wronged me. So I know myslf to have a very, very nasty cruel streak, to in fact be a cruel person. I am repressed, of course, and so  a hypocrite, for that is what repression is, and I have been doing it for over 50 years now.

However I am terrified but have no regard for what is called courage, it being a species of legalist hypocrisy. So cowardice does not really bother me.

It might be retorted that scripture requires hatred of sin. I fully agree. So it does.  But carnal men cannot produce this. Our hatred of sin is not righteous, for our righteousness is filthy rags  even as regrads our hatred of evil.

God is having mercy on me for these but he is not aiding and never has nor will aid my efforts in dealing with it.

But that is for another post

Brevity the Soul of Wit

Years ago I  knew my subject, or thought i did, sufficiently that i could talk for hours on it.

Now it is my hope or at least my prayer and aspiration that I understand my subject sufficiently well that I only need talk for minutes

I came to this conclusion after seeing a video of a world famous apologist answering a question during a Q&A period . I thought of that famous quote  to Mozart by the Hapsburg Emperor Joseph II, one of the few things the movie Amadeus actually got right.

His Imperial and Apostolic Majesty said to Mozart,  "very good, sir but far too many notes."

I would say to this apologist  if firstly I could contact him and secondly if I thought he would heed it

"very good sir, but far too many words."

Brevity is still the soul of wit and many words mask incomprehension of the sdubject all too often, or mask the arrogance of loquacity

Removed to draft.

Yesterday i wrote a post  as another summary on what legalism is. But i was full of fury in writing it, so i feel it requires  editing. I do not change my mind on what I said but my expressoin thereof leaves much to be desired. So I have removed it from my published posts, an option this blog site offers.

It will be up again in a revised form at some time in the future

The [Political] Honeymoon is Over

Last year the leader of the New Zealand Labour Party was a colourless nonentity by the name of Andrew Little. Before the last election he and his associates knew this and Labour's pollings were very low.

 So he stepped down and gave  eleadership to his deputy, a strikingly pretty woman named Jacinda Ardern.

The figures immediately surged.

I was not impresed at the time, late last year. It was clear that her policies were not in play  as regards the popularity surge, only either  that she had a pretty face or those irrationally addicted to Identity Politics thought a woman as PM made a  difference when the rule of female Prime Ministers the world over has shown that it does not.

Then came the election.

Incidentally I was not going to vote, having posted on this blog that I am moving to an apolitical stance  as politics is about the art of the possible as, by my amendation of Bismarck's famous quote to this effect,   practised by the contemptible. Politics is a filthy game and to call its practitoners "honourable" as is done in my country is an insult to language

For  some years I supported our new electoral system, Mixed Member Proportional Representation. The reader can google the term to find out how it works. I now hold that it was widely popular as the antics of politicainas were getting on everyone's nerves and it was an irrational reaction to dump the system rather than dump the clowns who were so acting. But at the time, in the early to mid 90's, I was a Labour party activist,  an actively  canvassing door knocker, believe it or not, highly, for me at least, politicized; and I insisted that if it were not proportional it was not representative. My older self would retort to that young fool  if such could be done that none of it is representative, proportional or othertwise, as democracy is merely a fiction as politicians obey their paymsters not their constitutents.

The thing is our right wing party got more votes than the Labour party - our notionally left wing party which has still not repented of its total betrayal of its own principles back in 1984.

But under MMP one of the minor parties  held the balance of power and was able to , or rather its leader, Winston Peters of New Zealand First, was able to select the government by choosing which of the two major parties he would ally himself to. Rather than doing what one would expect to be the decent thing and ally with the biggest party on election night, the right Wwng National Party, he chose, after weeks of holding the country to ramsome, the Labour Party. Some 20 years ago he had allied with the National Party  under the results of the first MMP election,  after a simlar long delay, but I suspect that bad blood lingers there between  the two of them now.

Thus, while I have loathed Right Wing politics all my life, it leaves a sour  taste in my mouth that  the right wing party was excluded  not by populart vote but by whoring and horsetrading  behind closed doors in what are now smoke free rooms . I do not rejoice that a party I loathe is ousted by such dirty means; and I do not approve those who approve said dirty means as long as by them  the Nats are out  of power. If the Left is no better than the Right what difference does it make? They only peddle different forms of filth

So a person whose pretty face caused Labour's  popularity to surge, for it was an immediate surge, not the result of a carefully considered study of her personal record, policy acts or decisions, was selected as our prime minister, by the grace of a minor player who fancies hmself a Kingmaker, and this because of the vagaries of a system itself chosen in reaction to the corruption and stupidity of politicians over 20 years ago.

As a historical aside I ask should I at least hanker for the return of the fate of failed King makers? Google the name Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick,  The King Maker and read of his  end

Now I have no idea whether Jacinda Ardern is capable or not,  but I stand by my reasons as to why I think she caused a populartity surge and was selected - not elected - as  PM.

And now for my purpose in posting here. A recent scandal has broken whereby the honeynmoon between the country and her - and then, I venture,  her party - is now over.

It seems it is not only church groups that have rural youth camps. The Labour Party had one some time ago. Alcohol was freely available to its teenage particicants - itself a criminal offence in my country. If the allegations are to be taken at face value some drunk teen girls were indecently assaulted by a predatory young male of 20.  It is not my purpose here to wonder if the allegations should be taken at face value, rather to comment on the political response to the whole issue

The incident was not reported to police, though as we are not a rape culture such things are indeed illegal here, neither  was it reported to the partents of the children so assaulted  - and they were children, let us not pretend otherwise; and to all appearances, the nub of the scandal, they tried to hush it up, or in a darker term for the same thing  they instituted a a coverup.

Of course the news got out. The honeymoon is over. The Party has taken a hit.

And Ardern's response?

full politlcal speak, saying nithing but appearingt to acknowlewge real responsiblity,

She said among other things "mistakes were made"

note the impersonal and passive voice.

Not "we messed up" or some active  personal use of words whereby I or we did something,  but the passive voice,  as if mistakes simply fall from the skies.

She is distancing herself by her very use of words.

She has learned the poltical game well and is on the way to becoming as filthy as her predecessors.
She may never take a bribe in her career. She may never outright lie to the House. But this shows corruption in the proper sense whereby it should be viewed, that is to say in the broadest possible sense.

It is absurd to join a corrupt sytem to attempt to reform it from within, for as the Bible says bad company corrupts good morals. And I value what little integrity that remains to me at my age after a lifetime of sin to want to throw it away by trying

So my move to an apolitical stance continues as my contempt for the Left grows to equal that I have always had for the Right.

"You follow Me," He said, "Let the dead vote for the dead or quarrel with the dead"

Always this is the best advice ever offered