New Zealand Conservative

I used to admire Rodney Hide. His blog was the first political blog that I spent quite a bit of time on when I first ventured into the NZ online political scene. It must have been around 2003. Anyway, I thought he was pretty clued on at the time. Now I can only shake my head at reading this sort of thing: I am left wondering if the conspiracy theorists have found a welcoming home with the new Conservative Party. Certainly Craig was anxious not to offend those who believe that governments are mass dosing us, that 9/11 was a government job, and that Nasa staged the moon landings in Nevada. Of course, it could be that Craig genuinely believes such nonsense possible. After all, conspiracy theories have the same amount of supporting evidence as the idea that a supernatural being made the earth and all its creatures in six days in 4004BC and now oversees human affairs. The defining characteristic of the Conservatives may well be gullibility. I consider myself to be a Conservative,...

Jesus on the Cross, from The Passion of the Christ  Rodney Hide has written an opinion piece for yesterday's NZ Herald on how Easter finished Sunday School for him. Many of the questions and issues he has with the Easter story are things that my children have raised with me. It does take many explanations, because being God being nailed to a cross to save the world is a concept that is not immediately self-explanatory. It was Easter at Sunday School that stumped and frightened me. I couldn't believe that they nailed Jesus on the Cross by his hands and feet and left him hanging there until he died. It was the cruelest thing I had heard of. The crucifixion's horror haunted me. I could not comprehend, as a little boy, that people could purposely hurt another person so terribly. Besides, Jesus had done nothing wrong. Our lovely Sunday School teacher said that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. I didn't think that I had been that bad. I also couldn't see...

Rodney Hide is writing about the legalisation of suicide again, where another person can help you die if you don't feel your life is worth living anymore. He uses the story of his friend Martin, who tried to kill himself when he found out he had Huntington's disease. Martin’s mother had died of Huntington’s disease. Her truly dreadful death took years. In the final stages of Huntington’s the mind loses its ability to control even the simplest movements – even swallowing is difficult and many sufferers die choking. So, at 19 years old, Martin learned he had a 50 per cent chance of suffering the disease. He decided not to marry. Or have children. The risk was too great. And in his 40th year he got the fateful diagnosis. We knew what he was planning. But the law forbade us helping or even knowing. He put his affairs in order. On his own, one night at home, alone, he pinned a note to his new pyjama top: “Huntington’s disease: Please Do Not Resuscitate”. He attempted a mas...

Yesterday, an opinion piece by Rodney Hide on same-sex marriage was published in the Herald on Sunday.  Mr Hide's article presumes that Parliament can create our reality and that in this recreated reality where marriage, a major social institution, is redefined by the whim of a few Parliamentarians will have with no deleterious effects to our way of life.  Most of his article is a history lesson on marriage and homosexuality in New Zealand, but curiously enough, the breakdown of the family, and the increasingly high cost of maintaining fatherless children through all these changes have not been included in Hide's piece - as if there is no connection. Hide starts with very bold statements on who has the authority to determine marriage. It's Parliament that decides who we can and can't marry. It's not decided by a committee of clergy. Or handed down by Holy Writ. So, marriage is whatever Parliament says it is?  Yet, marriage pre-dates the State, and thus comes...