On the Love Between James Takamore and Denise Clarke.

A culture which is used as a tewhatewha to cleave apart the desire of two individuals being together in life and death, is a culture that needs to change, not the individuals change for that culture. There is no culture worth preserving that would strike asunder the voluntary bond of love of such a couple, and their promises to each other. Look at the cultural collateral damage in every twenty first century hate-filled warzone. A culture that forcibly intrudes itself between James Takamore and Denise Clarke in death, cannot allow, logically, a relationship between itself and other cultures in life. Not really. Such a culture has no room for entente, nor compassion, and forebodes only a tradition of grief.

My previous post on race relations, my first, made clear Maori self-determination is virtuous. But the conditions on which that can happen peacefully are not in the iniquitous treatment of the grief of Denise Clarke and this couple's two children, by the whanau of James Takamore, who also disrespect the wishes of James Takamore himself.

Worse, in their grief the whanau of James have become bullies.

Rules of Engagement:

For those who need to brand me culturally insensitive, understand my argument: consensual love between two people, and considering there are children, the love that binds a family, must trump force and unchanging tradition. This is not the first time I've said this.

Connect your mind to your heart, and find your own answer, beyond the grime of time.

My First Blog on Race Politics/Relations in New Zealand, & that Speech of Jamie Whyte's … Well, Maybe.

[I may soon be publishing a post that starts with this.]

 

… The Left echo chamber of Twitter is growing firmly into the opinion white men should not proffer their opinions, with this perversely being the opinion particularly of the lefty white men giving their opinion on white men having opinions on Twitter. I'm sick of that type of childishness, so here I am for the first time posting my thoughts on racial politics and race relations in New Zealand, a discussion until this point I’ve deliberately stayed out of – and for the reasons written on, below, not because of the opinion against the giving of opinions by the opinionated lefty white men on Twitter.

 

Be warned, this post is the worst written, biggest (9,000+ words), most rambling, at times incoherent, self-centred post I’ve ever published, and is in main part a frustrating failure, yet, because personally seminal I’m putting it up for general ridicule. You will read how I started out riding the ethereal wings of epiphany, before crashing back to an earth as hard as reason, unable to get to the point I wanted, despite struggling over and over, trying to reconcile via goodwill, contradictions that could not be reconciled. In the final analysis, I couldn’t get over myself, although ironically the political notion I started out with remained, because it came from that set of principles I do understand: freedom.

 

So, in a post so conflicted it reflects the subject perfectly, to all sides of the race debate, prepare to be, pending your disposition, challenged – I hope - or offended – if you must. The following was written over a two week period, and is put up, in defeat, almost unedited.

 

[Roughly mid-way through that post I write this:]

 

“I have by this point, while thinking I am following a logical argument, somehow ended up within the internecine machinations of another argument altogether. … [Snip.] ...  Let me reiterate (for myself) that the reason for Maori self-determination is an end unto itself: whether Maori want it because they believe it will better the outcomes for Maori is irrelevant if considered the aim is to live defined by their own ‘culture’ as the indigenous people of New Zealand. This was the discovered knowledge I started so optimistically from. I’ve become derailed throughout this piece, and more than once, by that whole welfare motif again – bloody Marxism. I don’t seem able to think myself out of that because the debate over Maori self-determination as appropriated by the Left politick in New Zealand, constantly resets the race debate back to a solution based one founded in socialism: redistribution. … [Snip.]

 

Indeed, two great disservices have been dealt to Maori by the Marxists. First they captured the debate on ‘things-Maori’ and monetised it to the welfare tax surveillance state in a way that not only alienated classical libs like myself, but blinded us – as absurd as that seems in after-thought, and certainly as it would seem to Maori - to the truth of Maori self-determination – that is, it is a worthy end in itself if that is what Maori want. Secondly, the Marxists inveigled in via the generational destruction of a child’s mind in the state school system, the socialist state which by its very nature cannot allow Maori self-determination any more than it can allow my own, individual self-determination. My blog essentially has the single governing theme: self-determination as opposed to living as a plaything of the state.

 

[Ultimately, this is one of the at least three conclusions I end with.]

 

The irony is that for Maori to achieve self-determination we will all need a Western Spring to reclaim classical liberalism and the minarchist free society in which choices are available. That said, noting the legitimacy of the Treaty, and with the contradictory meanderings through my feelings (if not thoughts) regarding tangata whenua, toward the opinion Maori politics, and certainly the concept of identity, is not as simple or similar as classical libs would like to think, I wish Jamie had not played the race card this election. Yes, I realise tactically it might get him the percentage he needs in that dirty game called politics, but I would rather have a classical liberal party to vote for that was not actively out there cynically pushing the buttons of the red-necks – let the Conservatives and NZ First do that.

 

[Not sure when or whether this post will go up; you can read Life Behind the IRon Drape and won't be much the wiser about my life, certainly my wife – which would be a quick way to strife - nor my family, but this post necessitated just a slight bit more than that, so I'm weighing and wondering if I am exercising the required good judgement to let it go live in that vicious place known as the political blogosphere. Stay tuned, though it may be a week or two more …

 

For now, I’ll end my teaser post pondering this interesting piece questioning why none of America’s most prominent libertarian writers or commentators have yet written on the shooting of innocent teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, USA – the town now virtually under martial law after rioting – for the crime only of walking to his grandmother’s house, when that shooting and the increasing militarisation of the US police hits on so many libertarian themes regarding the out-of-control state. Which has me thinking about the libertarian writings of the time (or not) in New Zealand on the Tuhoe raids, for which police just this week have apologised. Might be more than 9,000 words. And yes, in this paragraph I’ve just confused issues of ethnicity and identity, the subjects of the debate on Maori self-determination, with another quite different topic, skin colour and racism, but that confusion itself speaks to one strand of my thought in the (maybe) coming post. And no, I didn't just say libertarians are racist ... this stuff is complicated.]

 

 

This is None of My Business, but … Labour Leadership Qua Women & Maori MPs.

I can’t be bothered with the strategising of party politics, unless it impacts on policy that may sometime be forced on me. So, let’s look at the Labour women:

Really excited to hear from all the Labour leadership contenders about their position on getting more women into leadership positions.
— Kate Sutton (@Kateannasutton) August 25, 2013

At the time of writing this, not a single woman MP from Labour has put up their hand to democratically contest the Labour leadership: this from the party just two months ago where many MPs were calling for gender quotas in the party.

Labour women MPs cannot expect to be given by quota what they are not prepared to fight for when they have equal opportunity with Labour men. Further, with Shane – gelding – Jones in the contest, you can forget a party gender quota should he win even deputy. His hand up for this contest yesterday, should have been all the incentive Labour women required to throw everything they have to gaining leader, deputy, or finance.

There are many capable Labour women MPs, so why are you not running?

Furthermore, I agree with Morgan Godfrey: this is the Labour party, of course it needs Maori represented in the leadership and at the policy table, so given the only Maori in the running so far is Jones, then strategically the case could be made for one of the very able Maori Labour women MPs to run.

But whatever, all I’m saying is a woman must have a go. Because this will become my business if, when Labour ever gains that sandpit in the Fortress of Legislation, it then attempts to implement not just a gender quota within the party, which I couldn’t care less about, that’s Labour Party business, but also force it on the private sector, making gender quotas an issue of the voluntary, free society, versus the coerced one again. If no woman contests this, I'll be pointing out the double standard here.

Also, my offer, seriously made, for a single election cycle to give my vote to Labour in 2014, on the conditions I have prescribed to Maryan Street, another able MP, still stands.

Random thoughts:

Delving deeper into this, New Zealand’s first transgender politician, Georgina Beyer, has made the observation yesterday that if Grant Robertson wins the leadership – and if I voted Labour he would be my pick to unite the caucus – then his sexuality would lose Labour the working class vote in South Auckland. So perhaps the women of Labour are worried such bigotry in the Labour voting base would damage Labour’s chances also. Two things:

That doesn’t stand up historically, citing Helen Clark.

Just like Grant Roberston, that doesn’t matter, it concerns next year’s election: one of you, or better, more, need to be contesting this leadership.

Albeit Beyer’s comments do reflect how Left politics is sadly about the collective identity, which lends itself to stereotypical thinking and bigotry, because thinking and therefore policy is designed around identity with a  group, be it race, gender, tribe etc, rather than the classical liberal individualism born of the refulgent mind I advocate which can be the only basis to the free, enlightened society.