The courageous left comes out in support of free speech

I wasn't going to comment on the business of the mayor of Auckland banning visiting speakers Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern from using council venues, other than what I did on Twitter:

However, I've been surprised and immensely encouraged by the response in this country that is overwhelmingly in support of free speech, particularly from those on the left like bloggers Chris Trotter and IdiotSavant. I don't agree with their views that Molyneux and Southern are racists and Nazis, but perhaps that mistaken impression makes their support for the free speech rights of the two Canadians all the more impressive.

The left has been the traditional bastion of free speech, seeing it as an essential weapon in their war against entrenched privilege, but in recent years their newfound cultural relativism and identity politics has trumped all else and led many left-wingers to abandon their support for what is arguably the foundation of all individual rights. The change in the left's position is surely all the evidence anyone needs that it is the left, rather than the right, that is now the dominant political force in the West, because only those in entrenched positions of power would see the right to voice one's opinions as a threat.

Then we have the views of certain people on the right wing who choose not to support free speech when it is two 'extreme' right-wingers who are being denied this right - people like this fellow:

Well, Mr Hooton, I don't buy it. It takes much greater courage to defend those beyond the pale on your own side than those opposed to you. You are obviously far too concerned with maintaining your carefully-cultivated 'reasonable right' position than standing up for the principles you claim to support.

A group of New Zealanders from across the political spectrum have established the Free Speech Coalition to challenge the Auckland mayor's decision in court. I would urge you to support them by donating on their website here.

Left-wing view of democracy should not surprise

Yesterday, I participated in an interesting discussion on Chris Trotter's Bowalley Road blog about the health of democracy in the Western world. Chris, who I am sure wouldn't object to being described as an old leftie, wrote in response to a New Zealand Herald columnist who was bemoaning the death of democracy, as indicated by the election of Donald Trump in America, Theresa May in Britain and Bill English here in New Zealand.

I said that democracy was doing just fine and made the point that left-wingers always blame the state of democracy - or some other factor such as 'deplorables', Russian hackers or 'fake news' - for their failures rather than themselves and their philosophy. The fellow who responded to my point said that 'democracy has a bad time whenever bad guys get elected.'

This comment speaks volumes about the real view of many on the left about democracy. They believe, like President Recep Erdoğan of Turkey, that 'democracy is like a train, you get off once you have reached your destination.' In other words, democracy should be allowed to produce only one result - victory for their 'good guy'.

Democracy is by definition a pluralistic system and if there can be only one result, then that is not democracy but a dictatorship. Of course, the worst left-wing dictatorships have always styled themselves in Orwellian fashion as 'democratic republics', so perhaps we should not be surprised when left-wingers in Western democracies reveal that this is also their interpretation of what it means to be a democracy.

Someone in America once said, 'scratch a liberal (in American terms a left-winger) and a fascist bleeds'. So true.

Trump and Syria - the entire dumbass neocon package

Well, that didn't take long. Donald Trump has ditched perhaps the most sensible of the policies he was elected on - a less interventionist foreign policy - by bombing Bashar al-Assad's Russian-supported forces in Syria for their alleged use of chemical weapons. I say 'alleged' because I think it is far from proven yet whether Syrian Government forces deliberately used these weapons and, as Chris Trotter says, it seems odd that al-Assad would suddenly order their use at a time when his forces were winning the civil war and he was being accepted back into international peace talks.

Trump's order should at least have the redeeming feature of ending the ridiculous conspiracy theories about Putin controlling Trump, although the immensely deluded commentators at MSNBC seem to think the whole thing is an even more convoluted conspiracy in which Putin allowed Trump to bomb his ally Assad's forces to put the media off the scent of the original Putin-Trump election conspiracy. Occam's Razor be damned!

I have always thought a Putin-Trump conspiracy defies commonsense. The biggest on-going threat to Russia is the economic threat of low oil prices, and the main reason for the decline in oil prices in recent years is US oil and gas production from fracking. And the one person most committed to increasing America's energy independence by removing carbon emission rules, building new oil pipelines and encouraging fracking? Well, that would be Donald Trump.

The worst thing about Trump's decision to bomb Syrian forces is that it indicates the neocons have taken control of the White House again, despite the fact that Trump seemed to be the one Republican president they couldn't control. The neocons are the people from the military-industrial-political complex who love to start wars because they benefit from them - in jobs, profits and political careers - people like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Bill Kristol. Trump's recent removal of Steve Bannon (who has some unadmirable policy positions but a militaristic foreign policy is not among them) from his National Security Council signalled this shift.

I almost could have forgiven Trump his dumbass immigration and trade policies for the prospect of a more considered foreign policy, but now we're just left with the entire dumbass neocon package.