New Zealand Conservative

From LifeSiteNews, an article highlighting that promoting gay marriage and abortion is part of a socialist strategy to attack the family and thus replace global capitalism with Marxism. A publication of the international socialist movement has explicitly stated it is promoting abortion and gay “marriage” as part of a multi-pronged campaign to “replace global capitalism” with Marxism. The admission came on Monday in an article entitled "How Can We Change the World?" by Todd Chretien in the Socialist Worker, which is published by the International Socialist Organization. The ISO proudly “stands in the tradition of revolutionary socialists Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin, and Leon Trotsky.” ... Today's young people, Chretien hoped, would carry on a social revolution by waging war on the family. “When you break the statistics down by age, race and gender, you see what the powers that be are afraid of,” he wrote. “Some 68 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 34, 60 p...

I still think it has to be satire, but truth is stranger than fiction they say, and this story sums up the way society is changing. When we discuss children becoming tradable commodities, the idea seems preposterous, but tradable commodities they must become, for some marriages to acquire children. Meanwhile, this is a story of a person who sold himself on the sharemarket. He'd let his new shareholders decide what to do with his life. Vasectomy? Well, they thought it would maximise his earnings potential not to have children, and his girlfriend being a minor shareholder, got voted down. Sleep deprivation experiments to increase his output? Why not. Shareholders also voted him vegetarian, and eventually decided a different girl friend might yield better economic results. The Man who Sold His Fate is the title of the article, but it would be more accurate to say " The Man Who Sold His Humanity ". And you can follow the twit on twitter: https://twitter.com/kmikeym ...

I was reading an article about how on the program "Dexter" about a serial killer who kills the bad guys. The article discussed bringing kids into the storyline, and Dexter is morphing from a cold, hard killer to a person that can alternate between being a loving Dad and then a cold hard killer. "Dark in a new way" boasts the article. With kids on the set, some observations are made: It's a strange thing for any child in their development years to spend time on a film set, says Dexter's altar-ego, actor Michael C Hall of his young co-stars. "They are not really privy to the darker elements - they're kept from that. But they are also little sponges and they absorb energy. There could be a scene where nothing explicitly is being said, but there's a great deal of violent thoughts or tension between the characters and we'll start the scene and the actors will give over to whatever that pretending is and [Luke or Evan] will totally burst...

More insanity around redefining marriage. This time, marriage is suggested to be a life long committment lasting 24 months. Like a phone plan. The warranty on the toaster you get given at the reception will actually last longer than the marriage. And no doubt, has more value to such people. This cunning proposal comes from the left wing liberals and communists aptly named " The Party of the Democratic Revolution ". I think it's much more enlightened to destroy society by popular vote. These kinds of acts of social violence underscore the point that when people abandon integrity and morality as a yardstick to judge themselves, they simply change the meaning of words to fit the way they prefer to use them. Marriage can simply become a 2 year renewable license, (with the obligatory government fees) and no-one is wronged or betrayed or let down if they decide to end the marriage because they were busy wronging, betraying or letting down their partner. Now all the...

This you-tube clip does a good job in counter-pointing the new left wing bible: The Spirit Level. It's worth watching just for that. However, it's also worth watching the last six and a half minutes (wind to 39:00) to see the typical tactics used against the speaker in what was a fair and reasoned counter to the statistical analysis in The Spirit Level - a reflection on the many of the debates of our age.

Lack of gay-parenting books concerns researcher Wellington schools are reinforcing the image of traditional families by not stocking books about gay parents, a Victoria University reseacher says. .snip Introducing inclusion and diversity at an early age could have a profound impact on all children. Showing the similarities between families with gay and straight parents would help combat homophobia I've just been listening to NewsTalkZB (Wellington) talkback this morning, and the callers were overwhelmingly against any sort of social engineering countering this apparent problem being introduced into schools. Not that what the general population wants is considered the final word on such a matter, as the situation in California recently shows, where it is now going to be mandatory to teach gay and lesbian history. Supporters are hailing the bill as a way to counter the invisibility of the LGBT community in many textbooks and classrooms. They also say it’s an important step...

Governments are not self-limiting. By some law of nature they seem to exist mainly to grow, and when a government's natural enemy is weak, it grows faster. Strong families keep government power and growth in check, therefore in order to grow, governments will naturally seek to weaken the family. LifeSiteNews has recently interviewed Dr. Stephen Baskerville, author of Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family who argues this very case: ... that government "is engaged in a direct assault on the family" that is causing its breakdown - which in turn allows government to reach into yet more areas of civil society under the pretext of solving the problems that the breakdown of the family creates.. You'd think encouraging family breakdown would be counter-productive.  You'd think that because broken families cost the tax-payer an extraordinary amount of money (estimated at £40bn per year in Britain), that government would naturally do ...

Teachers attacked by the hundred Hundreds of teachers have been receiving ACC-funded treatment after being assaulted at school. Principals are shocked by the figure and are demanding immediate action to make schools safer. ~ Front page, Dominion Post, Monday 8 March, 2010 Over the past few decades, New Zealand has been experimenting with a "non-violent" approach to disciplining children. Apparently children can be reasoned with and punishment of the physical sort should never be needed. First the schools were constrained with physical discipline being made illegal in the 80's and then a couple of years back, parents have been likewise constrained in reining in their unruly children. And now principals are shocked that so many teachers are being assaulted in schools. Why should they be shocked? Is not this just the natural consequence of removing punishment? Now it's the teachers bearing the brunt of increasing violence from children, next it'll be m...

Well, I called it during the smacking debate, assuming that making a somewhat ridiculous analogy would clearly illustrate how the government should not interfere to an insane degree in the private lives of families. Expecting perfection in human relationships, they continue to make more and more things illegal, on the basis you can legislate morality and virtue. This is what I said during the smacking debate: Imagine if all arguing between couples was made illegal? Well, that's what the French Government are doing :

Man This is Adam as painted by Albrecht Dürer. He is a man. Adam was a father, the father of the human race. Since the time of Adam all fathers have been men. No man has ever been mother to a child. All children that have ever been born have had exactly one father. Woman And this is Eve, the other half of the painting. She is a woman. Eve was a mother, the first mother and mother to all humanity. And since the time of Eve all mothers have been women, without exception. And all children that have ever been born have had exactly one mother. And whether Adam and Eve actually existed or whether they are figures of myth is of little consequence in this regard. It is self evident, supported by human experience and biology that the pairing of exactly one male with exactly one female is what required to produce a child - the next generation to carry on. To meet this necessity God, if you are a believer, or culture if you are not, has provided the institution of marriage. And necessity it is...

Look in many school foyers and you will notice the school's academic goals are displayed. They will be framed and say something like this: "We will improve our literacy and numeracy rate" or "We will improve our NCEA1 pass rate" This serious document will be signed by the principal as it will be part of the performance goals the Board of Trustees is monitoring. Yet how meaningful are NCEA pass rates and such goals? There are three issues to consider. First, two schools may have the same pass rate but will not have used the same mix of achievement and somewhat easier unit standards to get the same result. Second, schools, in particular principals, are canny enough to change their school's mix of unit/achievement standards over time to meet professional performance goals. Third, schools that don't play the game of changing the standards mix are getting overtaken or devalued by schools that do. What appears to be missing from recent magazine features is how...

Whilst Trevor Mallard is defending the honour of Wainui homeboys, by ironically implying Aussies are not fair dinkum, the odd Australian does appear rather odd. Perhaps they have relatives who live in Wainuiomata? Come to think of it, I do. Whilst I personally would never disparage a geographical location (unless it deserved it) I am guilty of the occasional disparaging comment about our Greenie brothers and sisters. Except, in this case, that would have to be my point. If they had their way, I wouldn't have a Greenie brother or sister, and they wouldn't be bothering me, so I couldn't possibly make a disparaging comment about them. Isn't it lucky they are alive? Restricting each couple to one baby, as China does, is "one way of assisting to reduce the population''. "It's something we need to throw into the mix," the former Democrats parliamentarian said. More people means more coal-fired electricity, cars, houses, water use and food produ...

And the ideological lines get moved back in the sand just a little bit further with the not unexpected announcement that ANY discipline amounts to a breach of children's rights. The authority for such pronouncements are made citing the bible of the the left, the "United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child". Supported by the "NZ National Curriculum", for the slam dunk. And super-nanny, the new age reality parenting program comes under fire for being effective. Recall from the s59 debates that a smack equates to child abuse, and now we are told that putting a child in a "time-out" chair for hitting other children amounts to this horrendous word called "punishment." Note the preference for the word "punishment" over "discipline". Discipline is verboten in these conversations. The article goes on to say that the way to handle kids hitting other kids is not to "punish" them, but to "communicate...

We don't talk much about welfare here at NZ Conservative. I know I did when I was more politically "right wing", but that was back before I researched the causes of welfarism. For in this society we have people that will live their entire lives on welfare and also those who will do anything but draw a benefit cheque, even when they might need the hand up. So, I don't think welfare actually causes moral decay, if that's what the visiting American Priest who advised George Bush on reforming America's welfare system actually meant. But I do think the ready availability of welfare is a major contributing factor to long-term welfare dependence. He now believes that the welfare state has failed to lift the poor out of poverty by creating a perverse incentive for people to stay on benefits, failing to help them overcome whatever obstacles are keeping them out of work, and neglecting the spiritual help that people need alongside money. "The current welfare sys...

I've just come across a very interesting article that joins the dots between same-sex "marriage" and a corresponding increase of the power of the state manifesting in an increased interference in people's lives. This happens because same-sex marriage is artificial and non-sustaining, therefore requires state interference to bring the bulk of the population around. Marriage between men and women is a pre-political, naturally emerging social institution. Men and women come together to create children, independently of any government. The duty of caring for those children exists even without a government or any political order. Marriage protects children as well as the interests of each parent in their common project of raising those children. Because marriage is an organic part of civil society, it is robust enough to sustain itself, with minimal assistance from the state. By contrast, same-sex "marriage" is completely a creation of the state. Same...

Hot on the heels of the new computer game "Grand Theft Auto IV" there's a new game that has just been released. It's called "Shooting Libz"^. The idea is to interact in a virtual world running into various Libertarian types and restoring community order by preventing them from doing that particular activity. You get credits (virtual cash) for every socially destructive or offensive activity prevented. You then use this money in later stages of the game to fund political activities to either stop or counter the Libz. It's sick. You have a range of measures that can be taken, one of the most extreme being using lethal force. The game can be tricky, as you can lose money (usually via legal fees) if you are too heavy handed, apply the wrong measure or use your "measures" in the wrong way. Play the ban card too often and you'll end up with the Greens in power and being carted off to the Gulags. For example, shooting a libertarian for ...

I'm all for income splitting - the idea that a couple ought to be taxed as a joint entity rather than individuals. In a society where tax is used as some sort of social equaliser as it is in NZ, it doesn't make sense that a working couple with the same income as a single earner couple get taxed different amounts. You'd almost think that the government wants to penalise couples who have one partner (typically the wife) stay at home to look after the children while the other goes out to work. I know there are many arguments against income splitting, such as what about single parents and it's not fair on those couples with children. In an ideal world, I personally think that income tax ought to be abolished completely and replaced with GST on everything. The privacy aspect alone of income tax allowing the government to know far more about us than they should is enough of a reason to abolish it completely. However, these things take time and in a country where it is e...

Parents of miscarried foetuses are allowed to enter them with a name in the official civil registry. This makes sense. They were human (albeit in an early stage of development) and their loss was a real loss to their parents. They were Real People that never quite made it to the next step of their life cycle. The "being born" stage. The least we can do is give them a name. Some groups are complaining about this. What are they so afraid of? I find this amusing, for reasons I'll soon explain. If we declare a pre-born baby human, will society really crumble? If we declare a foetus a human, does it make us lucky enough to be born any less human? Of course not. And what's the problem with giving our human pre-borns the status of personhood? We know, all things being equal, they are going to be born. The only thing to stop this would be an un-natural intervention, a terrible accident or some bad luck. So let's do it. And just to make this post controversial...

Andrei writes today on a new Government initiative to combat Conduct Disorder/Severe antisocial Behaviour in 3-7 year olds. The plan is for teachers to take note of which children exhibit behavioural problems - which could include things such as " interrupts others when they are speaking " and whether or not the child " takes his/her turn when others are waiting ". Not that those particular behaviours will necessarily be on the list as the government wants to reinvent the wheel themselves, but for goodness sakes! I'm really horrified by this. On the one hand I agree that children need to be trained how to behave. Having two boys myself, I am well aware of how often this needs to be done. And not only do children need to be trained, they need good examples of appropriate behaviour around them modelled by the adults that have the most influence on them - namely their parents. This influence is on-going and the training needed for children is on-going. Th...

I suspect I ripped the council off to the tune of $400 the other day. And because they haven't got my DNA on file (AFAIK) they aint gonna catch me. Heh. It was on the day of rubbish collection. As I walked to the bus stop early that morning, I came across a rubbish bag lying on the curb, split open and contents spewed out across the edge of the road. It was windy and the lighter bits of refuse looked like they were about to take flight. Luckily, a sturdy green bin was near. It was a bin from a private company. I always thought it annoying that we have to pay rates towards rubbish collection, and still people resort to the superior services of a private company. There's a lesson there for socialists. Anyway, that's when my lawbreaking commenced. I picked up the rubbish from the road and placed it in the sturdy bin. I also picked up the newspaper recycling that had been soaked with some liquid by-product of said rubbish spill and added that to the bin. I tidied up ...