ACT's David Seymour - i like his style.

[Logen Ninefingers]

Davflaws thank you for spelling it out so clearly in your post what we can expect under an ACT/Nat coalition. I think your comment about apparent hatred and contempt of those less able and fortunate than themselves is so true and it certainly generated more vitriol on this thread as they do not like to have to have their behaviour criticised. They are so quick to deflect the discussion away from themselves and respond with to personal attacks on posters and just ramp up their criticism of the Left or Maori etc. You are criticising their behaviour which is not okay, and they attack the person.

It would be interesting to find out just what exactly you are objecting to. All I can see are pitiful attempts to silence debate & shut down the sharing of factual information from both the historic and contemporary record.

We were told Labour was to be ‘the most open and transparent government ever’.
How history will judge this government will be that it - and its close supporters and confidants - attempted to advance a quite revolutionary agenda by stealth.
The more the agenda is brought out into the light where it can be examined, the more it will perturb and alarm a great many New Zealanders.

[Logen Ninefingers]

I disagree with your comment that nobody does hatred and contempt like the Left unless you are identifying yourself as Left.
Most the hatred on Sharetrader comes from those with a Right perspective, and I’ve read plenty of similar comments on the Herald from readers who are National supporters. But I haven’t come across a similar sustained barrage of abuse from the Left. There are occasional comments that are over the top. I would be interested to read those comments expressing hatred and contempt by the Left if you have a source.

Well you picked out one sentence from my post in isolation. Present it with the rest of my post, and the meaning can be comprehended. My post intimates that the entire philosophy of the Left is grounded in hatred and contempt. I wrote:

‘Leftism is all about grouping people according to various tropes & then spending your whole life wracked with envy and thirsting for violent revolution, howling about how things aren’t ‘fair’, and calling other people ‘selfish’ at every opportunity. The irony is that many of the people who spend their lives decrying capitalism actually do extremely well out of parasitically tapping into the financial benefits & higher living standards that a capitalistic society enjoys. You’ll note that not many of them are in a hurry to move to socialist utopias like Venezuela and North Korea….better to sit here in some ivory tower or public service role, absolutely milking it while lashing out at ‘selfishness’ and ‘neoliberalism’.’

[Getty]

Such as, being made a knight?

Ah, now Sir Winston, that has a ring about it.

How much of Winnies success has been due to his name?

Fred, Sam or John Peters just isn't the same is it?

[Logen Ninefingers]

Ah, now Sir Winston, that has a ring about it.

How much of Winnies success has been due to his name?

Fred, Sam or John Peters just isn't the same is it?

Wini Petere?

[Getty]

Peters weenie.

Some wish it would peter out.

[moka]

Well you picked out one sentence from my post in isolation. Present it with the rest of my post, and the meaning can be comprehended. My post intimates that the entire philosophy of the Left is grounded in hatred and contempt. I wrote:

‘Leftism is all about grouping people according to various tropes & then spending your whole life wracked with envy and thirsting for violent revolution, howling about how things aren’t ‘fair’, and calling other people ‘selfish’ at every opportunity. The irony is that many of the people who spend their lives decrying capitalism actually do extremely well out of parasitically tapping into the financial benefits & higher living standards that a capitalistic society enjoys. You’ll note that not many of them are in a hurry to move to socialist utopias like Venezuela and North Korea….better to sit here in some ivory tower or public service role, absolutely milking it while lashing out at ‘selfishness’ and ‘neoliberalism’.’

I was getting to the rest of your post.

I did read the rest of your post earlier and I didn’t comprehend it then it expressing hatred and contempt and that is why I asked for sources, and after rereading it I still don’t.

I can understand that you feel “attacked” by some of the comments by the Left but that doesn’t mean they are expressing hatred and contempt. They have a different view to you. You are exaggerating by saying their whole life is wracked with envy and thirsting for revolution and howling about how things aren’t fair. You are attacking the people and not addressing the issues about fairness etc.

I struggle to see how the entire philosophy of the Left is grounded in hatred and contempt when it is actually about making the world a better and fairer place. In general, the left-wing philosophy emphasizes ideas such as freedom, equality, fraternity, rights, progress, reform, and internationalism, while the right-wing philosophy emphasizes notions such as authority, hierarchy, order, duty, tradition, reaction, and nationalism.

[Logen Ninefingers]

I was getting to the rest of your post.

I did read the rest of your post earlier and I didn’t comprehend it then it expressing hatred and contempt and that is why I asked for sources, and after rereading it I still don’t.

I can understand that you feel “attacked” by some of the comments by the Left but that doesn’t mean they are expressing hatred and contempt. They have a different view to you. You are exaggerating by saying their whole life is wracked with envy and thirsting for revolution and howling about how things aren’t fair. You are attacking the people and not addressing the issues about fairness etc.

I struggle to see how the entire philosophy of the Left is grounded in hatred and contempt when it is actually about making the world a better and fairer place. In general, the left-wing philosophy emphasizes ideas such as freedom, equality, fraternity, rights, progress, reform, and internationalism, while the right-wing philosophy emphasizes notions such as authority, hierarchy, order, duty, tradition, reaction, and nationalism.

The organiser of the Greenpeace banner roll-out at Parliament writes blog posts which include a picture of Karl Marx with the wording ‘I’d rather have a revolution than a Labour government’. That is implicit violence right there.

I have no idea how many left wingers are latent revolutionaries but I do know they are on a moral crusade, convinced that the world is ‘unfair’ and must be made ‘fair’.
Fairness - or Social Justice - cannot even be defined. One persons fair is another persons unfair. It is all entirely subjective. The problem is that Leftists have their (vague) notion of what is fair and their burning desire to change the ‘unfair’ to ‘fair’, hence the shrieks of ‘selfish’ or ‘racist’ aimed at anyone who pushes back against what is really a slow-motion revolution that can never end.
Take social welfare for instance: raise all benefits by $100 per week and still someone is ‘poor’ relative to someone else. The quest for ‘fair’ is illusory, but can never end.

——

‘ Freedom’…to pursue happiness in your own way and not as part of a collective?

‘ Rights’…to own property, a business?

‘Progress’….to what? And how?

‘Reform’…..of what? To get to where?

——

‘Authority’….really? How come the most authoritarian governments the world have ever seen have been in the USSR and China?

‘Order’….you prefer Anarchy? Revolution?

————

Again: Fairness - or Social Justice - cannot even be defined. One persons fair is another persons unfair. It is all entirely subjective.


Michael Novak argues that social justice has seldom been adequately defined, arguing:

‘[W]hole books and treatises have been written about social justice without ever defining it. It is allowed to float in the air as if everyone will recognize an instance of it when it appears. This vagueness seems indispensable. The minute one begins to define social justice, one runs into embarrassing intellectual difficulties. It becomes, most often, a term of art whose operational meaning is, "We need a law against that." In other words, it becomes an instrument of ideological intimidation, for the purpose of gaining the power of legal coercion.’[93]

Friedrich Hayek of the Austrian School of economics rejected the very idea of social justice as meaningless, self-contradictory, and ideological, believing that to realize any degree of social justice is unfeasible, and that the attempt to do so must destroy all liberty:

‘There can be no test by which we can discover what is 'socially unjust' because there is no subject by which such an injustice can be committed, and there are no rules of individual conduct the observance of which in the market order would secure to the individuals and groups the position which as such (as distinguished from the procedure by which it is determined) would appear just to us. [Social justice] does not belong to the category of error but to that of nonsense, like the term 'a moral stone'.[94]

Hayek argued that proponents of social justice often present it as a moral virtue but most of their descriptions pertain to impersonal states of affairs (e.g. income inequality, poverty), which are cited as "social injustice." Hayek argued that social justice is either a virtue or it is not. If it is, it can only be ascribed to the actions of individuals. However, most who use the term ascribe it to social systems, so "social justice" in fact describes a regulative principle of order; they are interested not in virtue but power.[93] For Hayek, this notion of social justices presupposes that people are guided by specific external directions rather than internal, personal rules of just conduct. It further presupposes that one can never be held accountable for ones own behaviour, as this would be "blaming the victim." According to Hayek, the function of social justice is to blame someone else, often attributed to "the system" or those who are supposed, mythically, to control it. Thus it is based on the appealing idea of "you suffer; your suffering is caused by powerful others; these oppressors must be destroyed."[93]

Ben O'Neill of the University of New South Wales and the Mises Institute argues:

‘[For advocates of "social justice"] the notion of "rights" is a mere term of entitlement, indicative of a claim for any possible desirable good, no matter how important or trivial, abstract or tangible, recent or ancient. It is merely an assertion of desire, and a declaration of intention to use the language of rights to acquire said desire. In fact, since the program of social justice inevitably involves claims for government provision of goods, paid for through the efforts of others, the term actually refers to an intention to use force to acquire one's desires. Not to earn desirable goods by rational thought and action, production and voluntary exchange, but to go in there and forcibly take goods from those who can supply them!’[95]

Psychologist Steven Pinker argues that social justice "sees society as a struggle for power, also zero-sum, among different sexes, sexual orientations, and races [and] also has a contempt for science".[96]

[moka]

It would be interesting to find out just what exactly you are objecting to. All I can see are pitiful attempts to silence debate & shut down the sharing of factual information from both the historic and contemporary record.

We were told Labour was to be ‘the most open and transparent government ever’.
How history will judge this government will be that it - and its close supporters and confidants - attempted to advance a quite revolutionary agenda by stealth.
The more the agenda is brought out into the light where it can be examined, the more it will perturb and alarm a great many New Zealanders.

I would like to silence the tiresome repetitive comments such as “Labour was to be the most open and transparent government.” I don’t see that as debate. The comments are boring and childish. We know how you feel, you have told us countless times. Too many times.

But I don’t want to silence debate, which is having a reasoned discussion, and being open to seeing other perspectives. I would like to raise the standard of the discussion. You can share factual information and so can others who have a different view. I see debate as a discussion, not as an argument, a dispute or a contest to win.

I am objecting to tiresome repetitive comments, shallow discussion, lots of personal attacks, name calling, exaggerating and demonizing the other side to show how bad they are.

[Getty]

I would like to silence the tiresome repetitive comments such as “Labour was to be the most open and transparent government.” I don’t see that as debate. The comments are boring and childish. We know how you feel, you have told us countless times. Too many times.

But I don’t want to silence debate, which is having a reasoned discussion, and being open to seeing other perspectives. I would like to raise the standard of the discussion. You can share factual information and so can others who have a different view. I see debate as a discussion, not as an argument, a dispute or a contest to win.

I am objecting to tiresome repetitive comments, shallow discussion, lots of personal attacks, name calling, exaggerating and demonizing the other side to show how bad they are.

Moka, your comments and objections are probably reflective of many readers.

However, many others, and active posters have actually been traumatised and distressed by what 6 years of Labour government has done to NZ.

For them, to post and read what like minded posters say, is a cathartic exercise, that will lead to their healing.

I trust that perspective will help.

[Logen Ninefingers]

I would like to silence the tiresome repetitive comments such as “Labour was to be the most open and transparent government.” I don’t see that as debate. The comments are boring and childish. We know how you feel, you have told us countless times. Too many times.

But I don’t want to silence debate, which is having a reasoned discussion, and being open to seeing other perspectives. I would like to raise the standard of the discussion. You can share factual information and so can others who have a different view. I see debate as a discussion, not as an argument, a dispute or a contest to win.

I am objecting to tiresome repetitive comments, shallow discussion, lots of personal attacks, name calling, exaggerating and demonizing the other side to show how bad they are.

‘Demonising the other side to show how bad they are’.

This is all the Left ever do though. Disagree with them about the need to make everything ‘fair’ (i.e. ‘socially just’) and then will call you ‘selfish’. If you attempt to roll back any aspect of their ‘progress’ (revolution by stealth) and they will shriek ‘reactionary’. It is a rigged game because it is the Left who define what is ‘fair’ and what constitutes ‘progress’. Nobody else gets a say, even when you point out that ‘social justice’ is anything from poorly defined to illusory nonsense.

Leftism usually exists for any one person right up to the point where living standards begin to fall as a result of Leftist governments attempts to make everything ‘fair’ (which is akin to pursuing a mirage.) Many doctors and nurses leaving for Australia would have voted for Labour and ‘fairness’ at the last election. And why are they going now? Higher pay and higher living standards in a country that exploits its natural resources and is less intent on pursuing ideological clap-trap down a rabbit hole.