Taking the Law into Tribal Hands

A couple of years ago, I spent a month on a self-driving tour of Mexico. That country has a well-deserved reputation of being one of the most lawless nations on Earth. Mexico's murder rate, at around 25 per 100,000 of population per annum, is five times that of the United States and about thirty-five times that of New Zealand. There are entire regions of the country to which the warrant of the law does not extend or where the police are so corrupt they cannot be relied upon to enforce the law. When we were there, the Mexican president imposed federal police control over the state of Veracruz, sacking the entire state police force because it could not be trusted to uphold the rule of law, and since then the same has been done in Acapulco.

One of characteristics of a lawless Mexico is the prevalence of irregular enforcement of order (however those enforcing the "order" choose to define it). We got used to being stopped at unlawful roadblocks, often multiple times on a journey and on several occasions blockading entire cities. Many of these roadblocks were set up for the simple purpose of extorting money from hapless road users (particularly tourists like us - I think that rental cars in Mexico have special licence plates just to facilitate this). Others were established as protest actions in support of labour disputes or native land grievances. In most cases we weren't in any physical danger so long as we complied with their demands, but in one remote area of the country we were advised by Mexican Army patrols (the only legitimate authority in the area) not to stop for roadblocks under any circumstances if we could possibly avoid it. We were literally in fear for our lives.

I was reminded of my experiences in Mexico when I read about the "checkpoints" established by Maori tribal groups supposedly to stop the spread of Covid-19 to their areas. What makes these illegal roadblocks much worse is that they appear to have the support of local police and the New Zealand Government has refused to condemn them, which makes our country potentially as corrupt and as dangerous as Mexico. Of course, if I was to set up a roadblock at the end of my street, the police would be around to remove it and to arrest me as soon as you could say "rule of law".

We have seen the encroachment of special rights for Maori into New Zealand law for several decades, ever since Justice Cooke handed down his ruling in a 1987 Court of Appeal case relating to the sale of state-owned enterprises, which said that the Crown was obligated to act as if it were in a "partnership" with Maori tribes. This, of course, implied that Maori tribal authorities were equivalent to the Crown, with all the sovereign rights of an independent government. The problems with this are manifold, not the least being who defines what is a Maori tribal authority and whom do they represent? It is certainly not a recipe for universal, democratic, liberal government.

I have written before about how I believe legitimate political sovereignty derives solely from individual sovereignty, and therefore why I support the aspiration of any group of people for self-determination. If a distinct group in New Zealand, whether they are Maori or not, wish to establish a form of self-government, then that is their right. I also believe we all have an interest in ensuring all human beings enjoy the basic individual rights (of which the American Declaration of Independence remains the best definition with "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"), and as long as these rights are respected within the self-governing territory, then there is no reason for any external party to interfere with that self-government. What is intolerable is having two standards of law, or greater or lesser rights, based on ethnicity within the same jurisdiction. That is racism, pure and simple.

I will not submit to an illegal, racist, tribal authority that is trying to stop me going about my lawful business in this country. If I am confronted by an unlawful roadblock, I will act precisely as I was advised to do in that similarly lawless area of Mexico and I advise all law-abiding New Zealanders to do the same - keep your foot flat to the floor and keep going, no matter what.

[Hat-tips to Michael Coote at NZCPR and Bob Edlin at Point of Order.]

The Evil of Equity

The New Zealand Government has caught the equity bug. Everywhere you look they are trying to achieve it. I asked a senior public servant recently what he understood equity to mean and he said it meant 'fairness', but when I pressed him further, he defined it as 'equality of outcome'.

He used as an example the Government's intention to produce equity in health outcomes. In New Zealand, Maori have worse health outcomes than non-Maori, something that must be fixed according to government and social commentators. It is a legacy of 'colonialism' they say, although how the poor health outcomes of New Zealanders who have a fraction of Maori ancestry in 2019 can be blamed on a system of government that ended in 1852, is beyond reason.

One of the reasons Maori have worse health outcomes than non-Maori is that they have much higher rates of smoking than the population as a whole, which is directly linked to morbidity rates. Successive governments have tried to reduce smoking with advertising bans, packaging warnings and one of the highest rates of tobacco excise in the world (with a pack of 20 cigarettes costing around NZ$30 currently). Smoking rates, particularly amongst Maori, have been stubbornly resistant to these measures in recent years with around 15% of adult New Zealanders and about a third of Maori still smoking.

Other reasons for poor health outcomes include diet, lack of exercise and unwillingness to seek medical advice, despite various government policies designed to encourage healthy eating, promote regular exercise and to provide free healthcare for those who most need it. 

My senior public servant admitted that equality of health outcomes clearly required something more persuasive than the 'nudge' policies that governments hav employed to date.
"We should ban tobacco products completely," he said. "And fatty foods and sugary drinks."
"And what about exercise?" I said.
"Well, we should encourage it," he replied.
"And if people refuse?"

"All workplaces should have compulsory exercises in the morning," he said.

"And if they fail to comply?" I pressed. "Should we shoot the bosses or the staff?"

"Now, you're just being silly," he said. And there, the conversation ended.

I read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's great book, The Gulag Archipelago, recently. It tells the story of how the government of the Soviet Union came to imprison and kill a huge number of its people. The most profound message in the book is that the Soviet government's actions were a direct consequence of its misguided moral mission to produce equality of outcome. Solzhenitsyn makes the case that ultimately there couldn't have been any other result than mass imprisonment and murder from the single-minded pursuit of equity.

The only way for a government to achieve equality of outcome is to control every aspect of its citizens' lives - in other words, to impose totalitarianism. Those who refuse to be lifted out of their poor habits, need to be constantly monitored and prodded to improve. Those who already have better outcomes than others, have to be forcibly handicapped - as were the kulaks (the peasant farmers in the Soviet Union who had managed to accumulate a small amount of personal property who were starved or executed for their privilege*).

Equity cannot be achieved without force. And it cannot be achieved without dragging everyone down to the level of the lowest in society. The only exception is for the rulers, like the senior public servant I spoke to and his political masters, who earn more than 99% of their subjects. It is salient that as our rulers become detached from the rest of us, the more the word equity is upon their lips.

*Bear that in mind whenever you hear someone use the expression "check your privilege" today.

It is not racist to reject tribalism and neo-feudalism

Some left-wing politicians and commentators were quick to exploit the recent mass murder of Muslim worshippers in Christchurch, blaming it on the extreme right and 'white nationalists'. The New Zealand Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson went further, equating the attack with with oppression of Maori in colonial New Zealand and saying, "New Zealand was founded on the theft of land, language, identity and the mana of [Maori]. Here in...this very land we’re standing on, is land that [Maori] were violently removed from to uphold the same agenda that held the people in the mosque yesterday."

Auckland University historian Anne Salmond joined the fray saying, "White supremacy is part of us, a dark power in the land...it's violent and hateful, spewing out curses, incarcerating young Maori in large numbers, denying them a decent education, homes and jobs, telling them they have no future, and are better off dead." She went on to say, "Since the arrival of Captain James Cook 250 years ago, Maori have struggled to gain a nationwide acceptance of their cultural values, language and spiritual beliefs. Colonisation is one of Cook’s legacies and racism against Maori is a part of it. New Zealand has inherited a British supremacy perspective and it pervades every area of our society."

It is, of course, a battle tactic of the far left to equate any differing views than theirs with racism, but we should examine such claims for their merits. Does New Zealand have a racist, "British supremacy perspective" that continues to discriminate against Maori? And what does Salmond mean by the struggle for "nationwide acceptance of [Maori] cultural values?"

Colonisation ended in a formal sense in 1853 when Britain granted New Zealand self-government, but the first New Zealand government was democratic only in a limited sense, with a property ownership qualification for male voters. Most Maori, who did not have recognised legal title to their lands, did not qualify to vote, but this was addressed in 1867 with the establishment of Maori seats in parliament, elected by universal male Maori suffrage. Non-Maori men were not granted universal suffrage until 1879 and women in 1893. The Maori seats still exist and people of Maori descent can choose to vote in Maori electorates or be on the general electoral roll. In the last election, 24% of the seats in the New Zealand Parliament went to candidates of Maori descent, compared with approx. 15% of the population identifying as Maori, so at least in terms of democratic representation Maori do not suffer discrimination.

The argument goes a little deeper, however, and it appears to be Western liberal democracy itself that is regarded as discriminatory against Maori. This is surely what Salmond means when she says, "Maori have struggled to gain a nationwide acceptance of their cultural values, language and spiritual beliefs." She seems to support a reversion to traditional Maori tribal rule and this is precisely what those calling for greater Maori political and economic privileges mean when they talk about the Treaty of Waitangi guaranteeing a "partnership" with the Crown. It means New Zealand should have two parallel systems, a tribal system for Maori and something else (perhaps some limited form of democracy) for non-Maori. It is clear that the partnership concept means that, at a minimum, each system will have equal power, but more likely that Maori will have supremacy. 

Traditional Maori society has been compared to compared to Communism, which is probably why many left-wing activists romanticise it, but a more accurate comparison is medieval feudalism with its strict gradations of social status including aristocrats, the warrior class and serfs. Slavery was widespread in Maori society and warfare and 'utu' (revenge) were the common forms of settling disputes. The dominant units of political organisation were the iwi (tribe) and hapu (sub tribe), and there were no equivalent concepts of individual rights, personal property and the rule of law. It was certainly a very different political and social structure to what exists in modern Western democracies.

Contrary to what Salmond and others would have us believe, Western civilisation is not a racial thing. It was rooted in the classical civilisations of Greece and Rome and flourished in Western Europe during the Enlightenment, but it has since spread across the entire globe with countries as geographically and ethnically diverse as Singapore, Botswana and the Cook Islands embracing the Western ideals of individual rights, a free market economy and the rule of law.

Maori in the 19th Century took to the British way of life with enthusiasm, learning to read and write the English language, becoming educated in the Western tradition, gaining trades and embarking on professional careers, and in many cases becoming wealthy in their own right. But many Maori men also became labourers, which entailed a significant reduction in status from that of a warrior, and there was a significant element of racism amongst the European population, many of whom believed, like school inspector Henry Taylor in 1862, that Maori were "better calculated by nature to get their living by manual than by mental labour." However, that does not mean that the system is rigged against Maori today and I am far from convinced that even most Maori would want to abandon the liberal democracy we have in New Zealand.

It is not anti-Maori to resist the imposition of traditional Maori political and social systems on modern New Zealand society any more than it is anti-Chinese to oppose Maoist Communism. On the contrary, it is totalitarian to take the position that you cannot oppose such an imposition without being racist. We need to be clear about what we reject and why we reject it - we do not resist tribalism and a neo-feudalism because it is peculiarly Maori (which, of course, it is not), we reject it because it is incompatible with our values of individual rights and liberty.

It takes courage to stand up for what you believe in when you are being called a racist and implicated in such a horrific crime as the Christchurch mass murders, but we need to recognise the motivations of those who are exploiting the awful event for their political ends. They do not want a pluralistic society where differences are tolerated, they want a homogeneous world where everyone is in lockstep with their views. They call those who disagree with them racists because they want us to shut up. We must reject their premises as well as their arguments because if we don't, we'll lose everything.

Maori language

It is Maori Language Week in New Zealand, when the government promotes the speaking of the Maori language. This year it has become a rallying point for those who want to force every child in New Zealand, regardless of ethnic origin, to learn Maori.

Maori is not a particularly unique or even standardised language. It is very similar to other languages spoken in Eastern Polynesia from whence it came, including Cook Islands Maori and Tahitian, and there were significant variations in the language within New Zealand. Successive New Zealand governments have spent hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollars promoting the language, including establishing Kohunga Reo ('total immersion' Maori language preschools), Kura Kaupapa Māori (primary and secondary Maori immersion schools), a dedicated Maori language television channel and public advertising campaigns. Despite all this money and effort, Maori language use is declining with only 3.7% of the New Zealand population, and only 21 per cent of the (self-identified) Maori population, having a conversational knowledge of the language.

Maori themselves appear uninterested in maintaining their own language and young Maori in particular seem far more enamoured with modern African-American culture, such as hip hop music, than their own. There is a revival of interest in Maori but anecdotal evidence suggests this is mostly confined to the non-Maori urban elite, particularly those who work in government (which insists on Maori greetings and prayers at every meeting or event, no matter how minor).

I object to the call for the Maori language to be made compulsory in schools for two reasons. The first is that it is wrong to force children to learn something that is not of much value to them. Don't get me wrong, I think it is valuable for New Zealand children to learn languages other than English. I studied Latin, French and Spanish and have found all three invaluable - Latin in particular because it is the key to understanding so many other languages and much scientific terminology, and the others because I have travelled to many countries where they are used. I have never needed Maori and have no regrets in not learning it.

The second reason is that making Maori compulsory will limit our children's choices of other subjects. Any parent who has assisted their child in making elective subject choices knows how difficult it is to find a combination of subjects that the child wants and needs to study, and that fit in with the inevitable scheduling conflicts at any school. Compulsory Maori will mean fewer subject choices, or less time spent on other important subjects. As the opposition ACT Party points out here, New Zealand is not exactly an international leader in our educational standards, with Year 5 students ranked 33rd out of 50 countries (and last out of English-speaking countries) in reading literacy and only 49 per cent of our Year 11 students achieving the international reading benchmark. Anything that further disadvantages our children in international comparisons should be opposed.

The promoters of Maori language aren't interested, of course, in making our children internationally competitive - they are driven by their ideology. Maori language is a means to an end and that end is the promotion of group identity above all else. Maintaining the language is an important part of maintaining the pretence that there is an exclusive group of New Zealanders who are victims of the 'white, colonial oppression', and the teaching of Maori in schools provides a platform for the indoctrination of children in this philosophy.

I don't want to see Maori language and culture die or be assimilated into European culture, any more than I want to see that happen to the vibrant native cultures of Mexico that I experienced recently in that country. But forcing New Zealand children to learn a language that is of little use to them is not the answer. Language and culture tend to defy our efforts to control them and, like genes, they evolve to meet the needs of the environment in which they exist. New Zealand's future lies in being a diverse, outward-looking, dynamic society and our education must reflect this. Maori language has a place, but it must be a place that is freely chosen by New Zealanders, not forced upon them.

Crusades have had a bad rap

In 2015 President Obama invoked the Crusades in mitigation of modern day Islamic terrorism. One can only imagine why he felt the need to say anything that could be seen as a justification of the present day terrorist threat, but the fact that he had to go back to the 12th and 13th Centuries for an equivalent Christian crime speaks volumes about the relative progression of the two religions.

I have just read two books on the subject of the Crusades - or, more precisely, about people who participated in the those historical events. The first, God's Wolf by Jeffrey Lee, is a biography of Reynald de Châtillon, Prince of Antioch and Lord of Transjordan, who was the crusader knight most feared at the time by the Muslims. The second is Dan Jones' The Templars, an excellent history of the religious-military order that was the most effective fighting force to have participated in the Crusades.

I have always thought the Crusades get a bad rap from present day historians. They are cast as colonial aggression with superior Christian forces slaughtering the more honourable, endemic Islamic armies. Nothing could be further from the truth. The popular view ignores the fact that the Levant was Christian long before its was conquered by Islam in the 7th Century and before that it was Roman and Jewish. The Crusades weren't colonial aggression so much as a reconquest. It is true to say the Crusaders were brutal at times - the sacking of Jerusalem during the First Crusade in 1099 was perhaps the worst example - but the Muslims were no better, often slaughtering the civilians of the cities they overran and only sparing the lives of those they could enslave.

The books deal with two particular examples of the merciless battles that were typical of the Crusades. Reynald de Châtillon's great victory at Mont Gisard in 1177 saw the almost total annihilation of Saladin's army, but the sultan got his revenge at the Horns of Hattin in 1187, defeating the army of King Guy of Jerusalem and settling his grudge against Reynald by personally beheading the great knight (and thereby abandoning the chivalric convention of both sides that the captured leaders would be ransomed). Saladin eventually recaptured most of the Levant and despite several more crusades the Middle East remained Muslim, eventually becoming part of the Ottoman Empire until it was occupied by the Allied forces in World War One.

The need to recast all of history as a fight between Western oppressors and everyone else is just another symptom of the post-modernist, Marxist doctrine that dominates so much of scholarship today. We are told that Europeans should feel guilt for slavery, despite the fact that slavery was common to almost every society throughout human history and that it was the British who outlawed the international slave trade and gave effect to the ban with its naval power. Here in New Zealand we are encouraged to believe that colonial oppression and European diseases led to the decimation of the Maori population in the 19th Century, when in fact it was the intertribal warfare known as the Musket Wars that was the biggest factor in Maori population decline. And our children are taught that the Land Wars of the 1860s were a colonialist-Maori fight, despite the fact that more Maori fought on the side of the colonial government than for the rebel Maori tribes.

Winston Churchill reputedly said that history is written by the victors, but in the West we want to undermine our own history and self-flagellate ourselves in guilt at our civilisational success. We are fortunate that there are still historians such as Jeffrey Lee and Dan Jones who write fair and balanced histories of our culture that are as thrilling as they are informative.

Debate on Brash speech ban avoids critical issue

I am going to write some more in this post about the banning of Don Brash from speaking at Massey University, not because I don't think enough words have been cast into the ether on the subject already, but because I believe most of those who have commented on the affair have missed a crucial point. On the surface, the matter has been about free speech and it has been a credit to our country that the overwhelming consensus has been that Brash shouldn't have been banned from speaking.

There is another aspect to this matter that, in my opinion, is almost more important than the general issue of free speech. The reason Vice-Chancellor Jan Thomas gave for banning Brash was that "Mr Brash's leadership of Hobson's Pledge and views he and its supporters espoused in relation to Māori wards on councils was clearly of concern to many staff, particularly Māori staff." She went on to say, "In my opinion, the views expressed by members of Hobson's Pledge come dangerously close to hate speech. They are certainly not conducive with the university's strategy of recognising the values of a Tiriti o Waitangi-led organisation."

Hobson's Pledge is an organisation whose vision is listed on its website as "New Zealand is a society in which all citizens have the same rights, irrespective of when we or our ancestors arrived." That seems innocuous enough, but the truly contentious part of its mission is its opposition to the constitutional and legal privilege that has been accorded to Māori tribal organisations under the interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi adopted by the courts, Parliament and almost all public institutions over the last few decades. The issue about Māori wards for council elections was a subject in one of my recent blog posts. We have had Maori seats in our national parliament for 150 years but the idea of having exclusive Maori city councillors is a significant extension of this.

Both of these issues are significant and are at least legitimate questions for public debate, and Brash's views on them are shared by a large number of New Zealanders (and, in the case of the Māori wards, an overwhelming majority of those who have voted on the issue).

Jan Thomas said that Brash’s views were not conducive to the university’s strategy of being a "Treaty-led organisation”. What exactly that means is open to interpretation, but we can assume she means the university is committed to the post-modernist view of the Treaty that seeks to turn New Zealand's constitutional structure into a bicultural 'partnership' between Maori tribes and the Crown. This anti-democratic, racist arrangement would see governance of New Zealand shared between Maori tribal leaders and an unrepresentative government, a situation in which non-Maori New Zealanders would become second-class citizens in their own country.

Thomas’s actions in banning Brash is part of a broader movement to ensure that any view contrary to this post-modernist interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi is wiped out. The Massey vice-chancellor has made it clear that the university has a doctrinal position and it won’t countenance any dissent from that doctrine. That is the sort of thing that was typical of universities in Maoist China during the Cultural Revolution and that ought to have no place in a New Zealand university or NZ society as whole.

I think it is clear that the Treaty gives no superior political rights to any tribal leaders today and claims that it established some sort of on-going partnership between tribal political entities and the government of today are entirely spurious. Irrespective of whether I am right or wrong, I am entitled to express this view on an issue that is so vital to New Zealand's future. If this country has become a place where we cannot even debate such matters, then we are no longer a democracy. I am encouraged that so many New Zealanders have come out in support of free speech, but almost no one has addressed the elephant in the room - that we should be free to debate the place of the Treaty of Waitangi in our modern society.

Bob Jones is doing us all a favour

Sir Robert Jones, the Wellington property investor, political pundit, boxing commentator and writer, has never been one to shy away from a fight. This time he is taking up his cudgel against a women who called him 'racist'. It all started with an opinion piece Jones wrote in his regular column in the weekly National Business Review newspaper about the annual Waitangi Day fiasco.

Waitangi Day is meant to be New Zealand's national day, celebrating the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi between Maori chiefs and the British Crown in 1840, but it has become a day of such insult and even violence from Maori activists that in recent years New Zealand prime ministers have refused to attend the ceremonies at Waitangi (where the Treaty was signed) and many New Zealanders refuse to acknowledge the day with anything more than contempt.

Bob Jones was making a satirical point in his column when he said that the day should be repurposed as 'Maori Gratitude Day', an occasion on which Maori give thanks to the British settlers for saving them from self-inflicted extinction. The woman Jones is suing raised a petition calling on the government to strip of his knighthood for his comments and managed to get 40,000 signatures, but it isn't the petition that is the subject of Jones's counterpunch but rather her libellous use of the 'racist' epithet.

I have recently written about the antonymic use of the term. It is used predominantly not to describe someone who wants to discriminate on the basis of race but rather those who object to such discrimination. Thus, if you believe we all should be equal under the law, you are called a racist. It is long overdue that such insulting and dishonest use of language was called out and those responsible be made to pay. If Bob Jones succeeds with his legal action, perhaps those who use the term with such profligacy for their own purposes will think twice.

Rights and Racism

The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son ~ Ezekiel 18:19-20 

[They’re saying] let’s help individual A by punishing individual B for what individual C did to individual D some years ago ~ Walter Williams

Last week I had the opportunity to speak with an ethnically diverse group of young people about what it meant to be a New Zealander. The discussion was, for the most part, constructive and respectful. The most encouraging voices were those of recent immigrants, all of whom saw themselves as Kiwis and who were keen to make the best of the opportunities in this country. The only discord came from those of Maori descent, who saw themselves as something special with rights that trumped those of other New Zealanders.

The great achievement of Western civilisation is its recognition of the dignity and sovereignty of the individual, and the best manifestation of this achievement is the idea of universal individual rights. But we seem to have forgotten the true nature of such rights. If they are universal, they cannot be diminished by anyone else's rights, and if they are individual, they cannot be vitiated by notions of the collective good. Governments do not bestow these rights - they are inherent to us as human beings and the role of a government is to protect, not to abrogate, them. They are certainly not the right to anything (such as a job or a house). The corollary of the idea of universal individual rights is that we should judge others as individuals rather than as members of some identity group over which they have control and which they did not choose to join.

Racism means judging someone primarily on the basis of their race. There is no denying that racism still exists in Western societies but the term is so overused today as to be either meaningless or antonymic. If I decide a Maori shouldn't get a job because he is a Maori then I am being racist. If I decide a Maori shouldn't get a job because he is not as well qualified for the position as a non-Maori candidate, then I am not being racist. Nor is it racist to object to 'affirmative action' programmes, which discriminate in favour of people on the basis of race. Such programmes are racist in themselves because they assume that those who benefit from the programme are not capable of competing on even terms with people of other races.

Institutional racism is the premise that the institutions of society, such as schools, universities, employers, the courts, etc., are racially biased. The term is used to explain any situation where one racial group has different average outcomes to another racial group - for example, the fact that there are approximately five times the number of African-Americans in prison compared to 'white' Americans is often attributed to institutional racism in the US justice system. There is no doubt that there is a history of institutional racism in the United States - the Jim Crow laws in the South were obvious examples. However, claims of insitutional racism today are usually made on the basis of single variant analysis, i.e. the difference in outcomes is ascribed to solely to one factor - in this case, race. This is usually lazy and inept science because almost any significant difference between defined groups in a population, when subject to comprehensive analysis, turns out to have multi-variant causes (for example, this excellent article in Quillette magazine explains why the commonly-held beliefs about institutional racism for African-Americans are at best simplistic, and at worst false).

Institutional racism is a convenient cause for activists on the political left because the theory supports collectivist political solutions. If minority groups are institutionally discriminated against then surely we must change society's institutions? Nothing is off-limits - the legal, educational, economic and social systems are all fair game - and the need for total change justifies totalitarian solutions. Marxism, the political philosophy that is predicated on group victimhood, is particularly attractive to those who define all human interaction in oppressor-victim terms. It does not matter that Marxism has produced worse outcomes for everyone everywhere it has been tried - the good intentions justify the means and of course this time it will be different.

Here in New Zealand it has become popular to ascribe the relatively poor economic, social and justice outcomes for people of Maori descent to institutional racism and the attempts at redress have come to dominate our political discourse and to affect every aspect of political, economic and social policy. The most significant redress has been taxpayer-funded compensation to present-day Maori tribal leaders for alleged historical breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi (which was signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, making Maori British subjects and protecting their property). Recently, we have moved beyond Treaty of Waitangi compensation to granting Maori special legal rights over and above those of other New Zealanders, such as enabling them to claim ownership of the entire New Zealand coastline and territorial waters and to have superior voting rights in local government elections.

Preferential rights based on racial characteristics are morally and legally repugnant, whether they are the Jim Crow laws or special voting rights for Maori. They cannot be implemented without abrogating the rights of others. They aggravate the divisions and antagonisms that may already exist between racial groups and do nothing to enhance the individual achievement of the people concerned (for example, there is good empirical evidence that preferential racial admission programmes in US universities lead to higher levels of academic failure amongst those granted preferential admission).

It is worrying that many New Zealanders think that people of Maori ancestry should have superior rights to the rest of us. It means that they regard rights as goods to be allocated according to some arbitrary criteria such as racial inheritance. Of course, if rights are so tradable, then whoever doles them out can take them away just as arbitrarily.

Resource Bill is anathema to democracy

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about the possibility of a populist leader, à la Donald Trump or Nigel Farage, coming to the fore in New Zealand politics. I said that the lack of real choice in policies between the major New Zealand parties, National and Labour, could cause New Zealanders to look for populist alternatives in this year's election, but I also said that New Zealand doesn't have the same groundswell of political division and frustration that resulted in the electoral wins for Brexit and Trump. However, I think we are seeing the rise of an issue that could be a game-changer in New Zealand politics.

New Zealanders have put up with increasingly undemocratic changes to our legal and constitutional frameworks since the 1970s, all in the name of redressing alleged historical wrongs to Maori. People of Maori descent comprise about 15% of the population of New Zealand but those who identify as Maori today often have only a small fraction of Maori ancestry. They are likely to be more of English or Scots descent as Maori, which makes their contemporary grievances all the more ridiculous - they are calling for redress for the actions of one lot of their ancestors against another lot.

The Treaty of Waitangi, signed by many Maori chiefs in 1840, and by Governor William Hobson on behalf of the Crown, made all Maori British subjects, and their descendants (by constitutional succession) New Zealand citizens. Maori today are represented in government both through their vote in general electorates and through a small number of race-based electorates. Tribal leaders, who are chosen through family links and traditional alliances, have no constitutional role in national or local governament - but that is about to change.

The Resource Legislation Amendment Bill, which may pass into law this week, grants tribal leaders the right to sit on local councils with full voting rights. This means every decision of a council in future will be determined by people who are not elected or accountable for their decisions - people who often have conflicts of interest in the matters they are deciding. Few New Zealanders realise the implications of the legislation because the government has been at pains to keep its dealings on this bill from public scrutiny. New Zealanders do not realise that every local government decision concerning their properties, livelihoods, recreation and taxes in future will be subject to the whims of unelected tribal representatives.

I believe this Bill is very wrong for several reasons. Firstly, it is racist and contrary to principles of universal suffrage to give members of any race a position of privilege in our government. Secondly, the tribal leaders do not represent even the vast majority of people of Maori descent, who live in urban areas and often do not have strong affiliations to their ancestral tribes. Thirdly, it shows a contempt for democracy and constitutional safeguards and is likely to lead to corruption.

Lawyer and former member of parliament Stephen Franks says, "So far as I can tell from the Bill there is virtually nothing to prevent power sharing agreements with iwi/hapu [i.e. tribes] from by-passing democracy and diving below the current legal safe-guards against dishonesty and self-dealing."

Former ACT Party member of parliament Rodney Hide says, "Tribalism is the worst form of economic organisation. It’s collectivist, it lacks incentive to perform, the principals can’t readily sack their agents and there’s invariably a complete lack of transparency and hence accountability. The structure works to the advantage of tribal bosses, not members."

I couldn't agree more. This is one of the most significant constitutional changes in New Zealand's history and it is being sneaked into law. Once the public realise its implications it may become the issue that drives New Zealand voters into the arms of a populist leader like Winston Peters (who is of Maori descent but opposed to race-based privilege).

I think the silent majority has had enough of the gradual erosion of democratic rights and legal equality in New Zealand and that people are ready to fight back in the same way as British and US voters did last year. The political establishment will express bewilderment just as they did in Britain and the US, but they will only have themselves to blame.

Black Lives Matter leads to Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen

Identity politics is a big thing these days and no flavour of identity is bigger than race. The victimhood-mongers focus on other identities such as gender, sexuality, disability and religion, but race trumps them all. When the other victim identities are discussed, they are often combined with race (or confused with it - witness the labelling of anti-Muslim sentiment as racism) to greater effect. Nowhere is this more true than in America, where, a century and a half after 750,000 Americans died to abolish slavery, race relations remain a festering sore. The polarised political discourse there has got to the point where people of European descent are not even allowed to have opinions because those opinions are deemed to be the product of 'white privilege'. Unfortunately this form of intolerance is creeping into the conversation here in New Zealand, where any criticism of successive governments' preferential treatment of Maori is considered racism.

We are meant to accept that race is the most important determinant in someone's success or lack of it but, somewhat perversely, that the sole reason for differences in social or economic outcomes for different racial groups is discrimination. Except, of course, when those differences are in favour of the victim groups - for example, it is acceptable to say that African-Americans are better at sports such as basketball because of common physical traits but not to contend that people of Jewish descent are better at mathematics and finance because of inherited characteristics they might have.

Scientists such as Charles Murray of 'The Bell Curve' and Nicholas Wade* of 'A Troublesome Inheritance' fame have become persona non grata for publishing research suggesting that human performance in a range of areas is in part linked to genetic factors. Neither claims that race is a significant determinant in any area of human performance at an individual level and Murray's bell curves show that the performance of all races largely overlap - that there are many African-Americans who are poor at sports and Jewish people who are inept at maths. But those who criticize their books don't concern themselves with reading them.

Individual human performance in every sphere is overwhelmingly due to individual traits, most particularly the propensity to think and act rationally, rather than to any common genetic attributes. Even those individuals blessed with outstanding physical and mental abilities must work hard and focus their efforts on personal goals to reach the pinnacle of achievement in their fields. It is ridiculous to say Usain Bolt is the fastest runner or that Einstein was the greatest scientist primarily because of their race.

Racism and its close cousin tribalism are the scourge of our world, but not in the way that the victimhood-mongers would have us believe. Pre-judging people on the basis of race is foolish not only because it disadvantages the individuals that are pre-judged but also because it deprives the person making the judgement of the value that may be derived from interaction with those individuals. It is equally as foolish (and as insulting to the individuals concerned) if that discrimination is positive because it denies individual potential just as surely as if the discrimination is negative.

The Western world seems hellbent on returning to a time when people were primarily judged on their race. Whether this is well-intentioned or not, it is an anathema to classical liberal values of individual freedom and rights and is a very slippery slope that inevitably leads to greater racial conflict. Black Lives Matter leads to Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen as assuredly as night follows day.

*I reviewed Wade's book here.

Waitangi Day

It is Waitangi Day, which, for overseas readers, is sort of like New Zealand's Independence Day. I say 'sort of like' because, having celebrated July 4th in America, I can tell you Waitangi Day is really nothing at all like Independence Day. The national day in the United States is universally celebrated and an opportunity for Americans to express pride in their nation and unity in being Americans, but in New Zealand it is a day of protest and division. Almost no one here feels national pride on Waitangi Day - if there is a day when those feelings come to the fore it is Anzac Day, which is our Memorial Day, although on that day pride is mixed with sadness at the sacrifices of our countrymen in war.

The problem with Waitangi Day is that it has become all about Maori grievances and the separatist politics of Maori activists. The Treaty of Waitangi was signed by Governor William Hobson on behalf of the Queen and by many Maori chiefs in the place it was named after on this day on 1840, but in recent years official ceremonies at Waitangi have been marred by protests and violence. Successive prime ministers have been treated with contempt by local Maori, with the result that Prime Minister Bill English has refused to attend the 'celebrations' there this year.

Many of the Treaty of Waitangi grievances are, in my view, baseless. The Treaty is a very short and simple document with three articles that recorded the following:

1) Maori chiefs ceded sovereignty to the British Crown

2) Maori tribes, chiefs, families and individuals were guaranteed their existing property rights

3) It made all Maori British subjects.

Articles 1 and 3 effectively abolished Maori tribal government and made Maori individually British citizens, but ironically the Treaty has been interpreted in recent years to bring about a return to the tribal rule that it ended. I think it is clear that the Treaty gives no superior political rights to any tribal leaders today and claims that it established some sort of on-going 'partnership' between tribal political entities and the government of today are entirely spurious. There is nothing in the Treaty that gives legitimacy to current tribal leaders who claim to represent people of Maori descent - unless they are elected to our contemporary democratic institutions, in which case they represent all New Zealanders, not just those of Maori descent.

Governor Hobson said, after the initial signing of the Treaty on 6th February 1840, "now we are one people." It would be nice if that ideal was recognised on this day rather than it being seen as yet another opportunity to promote an entirely bogus separatism and seemingly irreconcilable grievances.

On Immigration, Sovereignty and the Modern Nation State

Donald Trump made immigration a central issue of his election campaign, claiming that immigrants take Americans jobs and commit a disproportionate number of crimes. I disagree with Trump that immigrants steal jobs or that they make a country less safe. The evidence from countries that have had high levels of immigration historically, such as the United States, is that immigrants create more jobs and commit less crimes than the 'native' populations. I believe that the benefits immigrants bring almost always outweigh any negative factors such as social disharmony and that anyone who comes to a country with peaceful intentions and who is self-supporting should be welcomed.

Trump's view of immigration is a typically collectivist one. Collectivists believe the rights of the group, i.e. the nation state, the race, the socio-economic segment or however they define it, should prevail over the rights of the individual. In the case of immigration, they believe the collective rights of those who are already in the country outweigh the individual rights of the immigrant and others such as family members, friends and employers who might have an interest in that person coming in.

I have written before about how modern nation states are, for the most part, entirely artificial and arbitrary entities. If you doubt it, consider that in the early 19th Century it was almost as likely that New Zealand would end up as a French colony or a state of Australia as the nation we became. The United States was cobbled together from territories that were settled, conquered, purchased and conceded over many centuries and through successive waves of immigration and it is still evolving as a political entity today (e.g. with the current initiative for Puerto Rico to become the 51st state). So when Trump talks about 'America First' or Winston Peters about New Zealand First, which America or New Zealand do they mean?

Political commentators and historians talk about sovereignty as if it is inherent to a political entity rather than to the individuals who inhabit that entity. If sovereignty is a right in the sense that John Locke or Thomas Paine defined the concept, then it cannot belong to a territory or a group, it must be inherent to individuals. The Magna Carta, the English Bill of Rights and the US Declaration of Independence were all based on the principle that state sovereignty derives from individual sovereignty and that individuals only cede a degree of their inherent sovereignty in return for collective protection - not the other way around.

Which brings us to New Zealand and the Maori. The Treaty of Waitangi was a deal in which Maori chiefs agreed to trade their tribal sovereignty for the protection of the British Crown. The Treaty bestowed on Maori 'all the Rights and Privileges of British Subjects', i.e. Maori individually became subjects of the Crown. This meant that they were no longer subjects of whichever violent and capricious chief happened to gain the upper hand in the endless wars that were fought between tribes up until 1840, and that they were emancipated from the slavery, indiscriminate tribal killings, infanticide and cannibalism that had prevailed in their highly collectivist society until that time.

Some tribal leaders and many political sympathisers today interpret the Treaty of Waitangi as giving residual sovereignty rights to present day tribal elites. I completely reject this view, not because of anything the Treaty of Waitangi may or may not say (although I think the words support my interpretation) but because I don't accept that tribes have any inherent rights whatsoever. Whether you think Maori chiefs ceded sovereignty or not is irrelevant - the Treaty extended the rights recognised under British law to Maori individually and those rights cannot be given up or abrogated today - at least not morally. It is the individuals who live in New Zealand today that have the sole right to determine who governs this nation state because it is their sovereignty that is being ceded - not that given up by a group of Maori chiefs 176 years ago.

Which brings me back to immigration. The main problem that collectivists have with unlimited immigration is their belief that a nation state is some sort of exclusive club, membership of which is determined by racial, ethnic or cultural criteria, and they don't want to share the nation's benefits with those who don't meet their selective membership criteria. This presupposes that a nation is a zero sum game, which is of course a typical left-wing view of economics. But if I am right and a nation is only a collection of individuals that delegate some of their rights for protection to the state, there are no collective benefits to be shared. It is up to individuals, families and businesses to decide whether they will be generous in accommodating newcomers and the state's role should be confined to ensuring those who enter the country do not endanger anyone else.

Mexico has lessons for New Zealand

I recently spent a month travelling around Mexico. It is not a country we hear a great deal about here in New Zealand but recently it has been in the news because of Donald Trump's campaign promise to build a border wall and make the Mexicans pay for it (although, interestingly, the US presidential election seemed to be of far less importance in the Mexican media than the outcome of the baseball World Series, which was being contested north of the border about the same time).

Mexico is a beautiful country with a hugely rich history and far more diverse geography and demography than most people would imagine. The Mexican people are warm and friendly, once you overcome their initial reserve, and they appear to enjoy life far more than the overly serious and officious Americans north of the border. However, Mexico is a basket case politically, economically and socially, which is why so many Mexicans want to join their numerous cousins in the USA.

Mexicans, like Maori, still tend to blame their people's ills on colonialism but they perhaps have a greater justification in doing so than those descended from the first New Zealanders. The Spanish conquistadors had few of the qualms of the British colonisers in New Zealand, seizing all the land, enslaving the entire indigenous population and setting up a feudal society that various revolutions since have never entirely overcome. The consequences of this is that Mexico today is a country that is still to some extent at war with itself. 

The conflict in the country is seen in several areas. Firstly, there is the well-known drug violence, which is mainly confined to the northern regions that border the United States. The drug violence is all the worse because of the extensive corruption in the local police forces that not only turn a blind eye to much of the violence but actually participate in some of the worst of it (such as the massacre of 43 students in Guerrero in 2014). Then there is the political violence, like the recent kidnapping and torture of a priest in Veracruz, which seems to be a constant if low-level threat particularly in the states of Oaxaca and Chiapas. And finally there is the less overtly violent, but nevertheless intimidatory, protest actions that regularly disrupt life in all the major cities in Mexico - such as barricading all the exits from a city and demanding money from drivers to let them past (which I personally experienced on several occasions).

Tribalism plays a significant part in Mexico's political and social conflict. Ethnic groups such as the Nahuatl, Yucatec and Zapotec all have their particular grievances, usually about land and the preservation of language and culture. Like Maori, they choose to focus on their differences rather than on commonalities of shared national heritage, individual rights and the benefits of living in a modern, pluralistic society. Many of their historical complaints may be justified but collective grievances and identity group politics are only likely to hold people back and ultimately economic and social advancement always comes down to individual aspirations and responsibility.

Mexico seemed to be on a track to economic prosperity and real democracy in the latter decades of the 20th Century after hundreds of years of autocracy and one-party rule, but progress has stalled in the last twenty years and the lack of investment in infrastructure such as roads, schools and hospitals is obvious to anyone visiting the country. Undoubtedly the country's long dalliance with socialism is a significant cause of this decay, with even the state-owned oil monopoly, Pemex, unable to maintain investment in new exploration and extraction methods.

There are some lessons in Mexico for New Zealand, which has been encouraging the grievances of Maori for the last forty years in a seemingly endless series of Treaty of Waitangi claims and settlements. The strength of modern Western democracies is in their unity and common humanity, not in tribal differences. Universal rights to life, liberty, the pursuit of one's own interests and equality before law are the keys to freedom and prosperity. Tribalism and the inevitable grievances that arise from identity politics are obstacles not the solution.

A Troublesome Inheritance

I am reading a lot of books at the moment (hence the previous blog post on books about Islam) and one that I have devoured recently is Nicholas Wade's controversial treatise A Troublesome Inheritance - Genes, Race and Human History. Wade's book has been heavily criticised because it rejects the modern politically correct view that race is purely a social construct. In many ways the validity of Wade's basic theory is obvious - through DNA testing geneticists can tell to a very high degree of accuracy a person's race (and in the event they are of recent mixed ancestry, their parents' and grandparents' races), and race is a key indicator of susceptibility to many inheritable diseases such as sickle cell anaemia. Furthermore, it is obvious that race is a strong indicator of intellectual and behavioural characteristics, e.g. people of Jewish descent are far more likely to be in occupations that require strong numerical skills such as banking or physics.

Wade goes further, however, and challenges the assumption of modern sociologists and anthropologists that human evolution stopped with the development of agriculture ten thousand years ago. He turns this view on its head and asserts that the progression from smaller-scale tribal societies to the large nation states that we know today is due, at least in part, to evolutionary factors. The corollary of this is that tribal systems of society that have survived into the modern era have done so because of genetic constraints on their ability to extend trust and cooperation beyond a small social group that has strong kinship ties.

This inevitably sounds a little racist although Wade is at pains to point out that he doesn't contend that any race is superior to another, only that different races have evolved to adapt to their different environments. I don't completely buy all of Wade's theory and some of the evidence he presents seems scant at best. However, it would help explain why tribal societies such as New Zealand's Maori and Australia's Aborigines find it so difficult to make a successful transition to modern, Westernised societies. Maori aspirations to return to more tribal-based forms of government and resource ownership are understandable if tribalism is built into their DNA. The problem is that tribalism is inconsistent with our modern, democratic, liberal social structures. If we assume that evolution, even at its most agile, will take many hundred of years to adapt to a significant environmental change, then that means the conflict between Western and tribal social structures is likely to be with us for a long time to come.

The ‘H’ Debacle – Where Will it End?

So the bureaucrats of the NZ Geographic Board have, entirely predictably, decided to change the name of the city of Wanganui. Never mind that the residents of Wanganui overwhelmingly don’t want it changed and the historical case for change is, at best, speculative. They’ve done the politically correct thing and will ensure the city and its businesses incur hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in cost changing everything from street signs to letterheads.

So what is next? Will Petone have to be changed to “Pito-one”, Porirua to “Pari-rua”, and Otago to “Otakou”?

The Maori language is not immutable. Maori themselves have adapted their language to modern times, adding a huge number of new words to the language (such as “kawhe” for coffee) and adapting others where necessary. They have adapted many English words and names for their own use (as such “Poneke” for Port Nicholson). And it is not as if Maori, particularly young Maori, are paragons of usage and pronunciation when it comes to English (yes, it’s “youse bros” I’m talking about).

So, it is a little rich when they come over all indignant and high-handed about a Maori place name has changed marginally over time through common usage, which may be the case with Wanganui (or it simply may be, as I have heard at least one Maori language scholar state, that the word was always pronounced with a “w” sound, not a “wh”).

As other bloggers have been quick to point out, there are far more important problems for Maori to be concerned about such as family violence, criminal offending rates, health and educational achievement.