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The inadequacy of political “kindness” In response to a Times article called “How I watched the halo slipping from Jacinda Ardern”, a commenter called Iain Thorpe made a very good point:
There are deep problems with “kindness” as a political philosophy. If kindness is the answer to all problems, then the problems must be caused by unkindness. And people who disagree with you must be unkind people. Obviously you don’t have to listen when unkind people try to tell you anything. And you certainly don’t have to offer them the same concern or compassion as other people. Their unkindness is their own fault. You don’t have to do anything for it, or for them. And so “kindness” ends up being without empathy, the opposite of inclusion. Adern’s inability to deal with people who disagreed with or were disadvantaged by her government’s policies was striking. She seldom even attempted to speak to them and seemed incapable of winning over anyone who opposed her.
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It is very easy to be kind with other people’s money.
Same goes for “fairness”.
Both Stonyground and decine have made good comments.
Former Prime Minister Ardern could have been worse, but the lady did take ruthless advantage of a terrible murder outrage to push yet more restrictions on Freedom of Speech and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms – I say “take advantage” as it was quite clear that the Australian who committed the murders in New Zealand would have done so regardless of the regulations on these matters.
As for Covid – New Zealand is surrounded by hundreds of miles of ocean, isolation was an option there which it just was not in other countries such as the United Kingdom and United States (which are unable to even secure their borders).
As for the Covid injections – it is becoming sadly clear that pushing the injections was not an act of kindness.
“seemed incapable…” – a point is missed. Under Marxist SJW Virtue-Signalling Theory, people who disagree with you are either terminally stupid or criminal – or both – and by their very existence, deserve neither kindness nor consideration; they deserve only contempt and pejorative labelling, “rayciss”, “deplorable” &c, so your minions & fellow-travellers may duly recognise them and react accordingly. They aren’t really “people”; they’re “Death-Eaters”, the ones to be resolutely ignored – and come the revolution, they may be labelled Enemies of the People and subjected to pogrom without delay. That’s what labelling is for.
Bit like “caring professions”
Every thing else being an “uncaring” profession (pretty well everything really)
If you want “kindness” to be your rule, you need radical kindness, presented even to your opponents and to their arguments.
Otherwise you end up in that trap, yes.
(Radical kindness may or may not be its own trap, but at least it’s consistent.)
I believe that Ayn Rand said that kindness is the opposite of justice.
Jacinda Ardern gave us a glimpse of what life would be like if the Greta Thunbergs of this world ever reach any kind of ascendancy – humourless, pecksniff, prodnose prigs eternally bossing the rest of us around for what she considers to be our “own good”:. F**k her, and the horse she rode in on – and that’s not language I resort to often. I’m glad for our NZ friends that she got ridden out of their town, but I fear for the rest of us as she will surely pole-vault her way into some unelected Davos/WEF/globalist/insect-eating sinecure, from where she will potentially have the capacity to ruin things for all of us and not just her compatriots. She imposed a lockdown on NZ to prevent people from entering or leaving – can the voters of NZ not impose similar terms upon her now?
llater,
llamas
Lets not confuse the branding with the substance. Ardern publicly committed her government to being the most open and transparent ever. Score? F. Departments, Ministers routinely just ignore inconvenient questions. No More Children living in poverty. Score F. By any objective measure this has got worse in NZ. Fix unaffordable housing by building 100,000 “affordable” homes. F. About 1,000 in five years. Plant 1 billion trees. F About 5 million. Instead, without ever campaigning on these issues: Biggest gun grab in the history of NZ. With one “Captains Call” wiped out the natural gas industry in NZ. Lets not get started on lockdowns and Vaxxing. Declared war on private residential investors leading to a chronic shortage of rental properties. Has done (probably) irreparable damage to the structure of democracy in NZ by quietly introducing a co-governance model where some citizens votes and rights are different to everyone else’s, forced acquisition of private property in response to ambit claims by minority groups, setting a precedent that shout loud enough and nothing you own is really yours any more. Alarming slide of NZ performance on international education metrics despite vast sums of money. Confiscation and re-distribution of assets built up over generations by local communities and effectively handed to Iwi. Oversaw the single largest increase in non wartime public debt ever in NZ. I could go on.
Possibly also the laziest PM ever. A tiny mind in a cabinet of intellectual Midgets. Known to, um, struggle with the truth on occasions. Very prone to emote rather than rationally debate. Zero tolerance for dissent. With no mandate has used her parliamentary majority to drag the country even further left that in was before. Was on the way to electoral oblivion later this year as the groundswell of dismay and anger started coming through loud and clear in the polls.
Hopefully she follows her mentor Helen Clark and takes up a role in the UN 🙂
[…] actually that comment by one Iain Thorpe and picked up the blog site Samizdata, is more interesting than the article itself. He goes on to […]