Progressive politics embodies the idea of movement, and we have had a large helping recently. But which way are we moving? Is it upwards or downwards, forwards or back?
Attributed in the Regency period – that pinnacle of British, if not of global civilisation – to Alexander Fraser Tytler, is the observation that:
“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”
It goes on:
“The average age of the world’s greatest civilisations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years.’ Set against New Zealand’s official ‘start date’ of 1840 this makes for sober reading. In the course of 200 or so years, nations progress: ‘from bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to complacency; From complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”
This is a process which is known as the ‘Tytler cycle’.
At which point, currently, are we? Our political conversation has been framed for thirty years or more almost entirely by the left. It isn’t Winston Peters who is the ‘handbrake’ on the direction of travel. It is the National party, which is dragged like an anchor behind the socialists’ unstoppable tugboat.
Labour promises great spending from the treasury in order that a complacent population might abandon self-control and live lives of immoderation on the public purse. There is, by now, hardly an aspect of life which the government is not expected to furnish us with; barely an area in which we are expected to provide for ourselves.
In health and education, Ardern plans to ‘stimulate the economy’ through eye-watering and, of course, completely unjustifiable spending. Collins would do virtually the same. In managing coronavirus, Ardern intends to continue her unreasonable imprisonment of the population, feeding and watering the credulous “team of five million”, for free, on kindness and borrowed money.
Collins, representing National’s broad church, clearly feels unable to stray too far from what is now the official line. Her promise: to lock down for COVID a little less. Heaven forbid that the public be treated as free individuals inhabiting a free society, at liberty to make their own decisions – as was our forefathers’ one-time and distant dream.
Collins’s most significant pronouncement of the second debate was that she is a Christian. That this should be significant in a country which was once, in its entirety, ostensibly so is telling. But I cannot remember the last leader of our nation who professed to possessing our cardinal faith. Even so, Collins placed a bet both ways by later declaring herself a “Christian feminist” – a quite unnecessary pairing, and an incongruous one, much like a Halal ham sandwich.
Showing that, in conscience at least, she understands Mark 9:40 – “For he that is not against us is on our part” – Ardern continued her usual double-speak regarding faith (“I was [a Mormon], and then I wasn’t”), and refused to enunciate a clear position on the forthcoming socially-destructive cannabis legislation which she is clearly so fond of. Speaking velvet words with a forked tongue, her stock response continues to be: “read between the lines”. She did, at least, admit to trying cannabis which, for a person, this self-indulgent, should come as no surprise.
Where does this leave us? Living, as we do, in a world of choices, it is not the free market which has failed us. It is society; it is we, ourselves. As we careen from entitled self-absorption to the complete abdication of personal responsibility, it cannot be a surprise that freedom has been centralised and independence controlled.
An Ardern second term, which she did specifically ask for, represents a point of no return at which the government achieves complete control and the nodding serfs walk blindly into bondage, happy to be relieved of responsibility for raising their own children, providing for their own families, or even wiping their own bottoms.
Towards the end of the exchange, Ardern outlined a little more of her dystopian vision for a post-agricultural New Zealand, implemented no doubt to the UN’s blueprint, in which displaced populations of state-funded, multi-ethnic and multi-lingual aliens inhabit townscapes of tower blocks, powered by windmills, and dine on vegan soup.
Collins’s response was to say that she only eats meat twice a week. God help us! The matriarchy’s grip is tightening, and the future looks feminist. Female leadership contenders, an all-female panel, and Paddy Gower might have led an outsider to believe that there are no men left in New Zealand.
Those that there are, we might imagine, are so completely incapacitated on account of being permanently wired to reality television – no doubt featuring ‘fisherperson’ Clarke Kardashian and Meghan Markle’s husband, whatever that bloke’s name is – that they won’t even notice what’s happening to them.
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