Arrogant Old Men
April 26 11:38 AM
AUTHOR:
The breathtaking arrogance of the right wing of politics never ceases to amaze me.
The clumsy, Don Brash fronted (but no doubt manipulated by others) attempt to take over the leadership of the ACT Party is a classic case in point. The purity of the cause seems always to outweigh the practicalities, let alone the sensibilities of those involved. In earlier times, it was the type of grandiose pomposity that led to the great imperial conquests that sowed the seeds of so much of the bitterness our world now struggles to redress. Or, in its most sinister form, it gave rise to the pursuit of lebensraum that led to the enslavement of most of Europe and the most despicable ethnic cleansing the world has ever seen.
Now, admittedly, both of these examples are a long way from the current travails of the ACT Party and the intrigues of Dr Brash and his boy scout conspirators. However, there is a fundamental link worth noting – the rigid adherence to ideology. In this instance, it is apparently because John Key has not been sufficiently right wing as Prime Minister that is the point of irritation (not the more salient political fact that he is the most popular right leaning Prime Minister in living memory). So, he has to be given a good dose of ideology (a little bit like the ghastly concoctions our parents used to ram down our throats to ward off winter ills) to bring him back on course. And that cure can only be provided by a good dose of hard right medicine.
This latest hapless band of (dare I say elderly) brothers rail against the political correctness of the left as nanny state interventionism, and mother knows best politics, while at the same time arguing it is time to do “what is right for country”, rather than what people want and thought they voted for. And through it all they fail to see the extraordinary irony of their position. Their cure is the modern “doctor state” interventionism. This blindness to reality is what happens when one becomes so blinkered by ideology to see the world for what it is any more.
All this would be a pathetic joke, if it were not so serious. These political Don Quixotes might be left to tilt happily at windmills into their dotage, except for the possibility that they might gain a toehold of political power, and therefore drag the Key government unwillingly down their path as the price of support. A National-led government beholden to these extremists would be just as bad as a Labour-led government held hostage by the Greens and Hone Harawira.
That is where UnitedFuture comes in. Our moderate liberal centrism based around sound economics, good social policy and a commitment to preserving our heritage accords with the aspirations of a good many New Zealanders, and we can be their bulwark against extremism, if given the opportunity. John Key’s next government does not have to face the prospect of having to accommodate the sterile, harsh politics of the past the far right now offers up once more. And Labour voters who have written off their party, but who may grudgingly accept a moderate National-led government, also have a way out.
It comes down to this – if UnitedFuture is not playing a significant role in the next John Key government, then what currently looks like a political comedy on the far right, will become a national nightmare of significant proportions. The classic no-brainer, really.