Alarm bells ring

Wayne Mapp in his "PC" speech (hat tip Tony for the link):

But democracy is not just about choice, it is also about majorities. The ideas and values of the majority are able to prevail over other choices.

Let me get this quite clear. I was under the impression that liberalism is about many different views and voices. Indeed Mapp says so himself, two sentences earlier in the same speech:

[L]iberalism encourages competing political ideas...

This is amazing.

Mapp, like Brash, only respects competing ideas where they are consistent with their self-defined "white picket fence" majority.

And these people seriously think they're on to a winner? Sounds more like fascism, to me.

Comments

[RWDB]

(scratches head)

I truly don't understand the fuss here.

Democracy is about majorities. Isn't that obvious? What is controversial about that?

[Anita]

IMHO democracy means that we each have an equal voice and right to be heard.

Therefore it means that the majority shouldn't band together to drown out minority voices, nor should minorities drown out majority voices.

Where we are in that balance is open to debate. Alan Duff argues that the minorities have drowned out the majority. I would argue that there are some minority voices which are heard loud and clear in NZ, and others which are completely unaudible.

Wayne Mapp is arguing for more volume for "the mainsteam". I think that risks both losing some of the minority voices we now have, and preventing any new ones breaking through the static.

[Idiot/Savant]

RWDB: Once upon a time, there was a strand of the right which understood that the power of the majority had to be limited, to prevent it from tyrannising minorities. No longer, it seems.

[Conor]

I'm sorry the National party lost the election by 45000 votes. They therefore cannot claim to speak on behalf of the majority...

[SPC]

A combination of McCarthyism, the House of Un-American Activities Committee and Christian Identity Nationalism, all wrapped in the word/term "mainstream/mainstream nationalism". Anything liberal left is fellow traveller with the "UN" commies, is un-American and of secular society liberalism condemnded by the Catholic Church and American "Judeo-Christian" (Moral Majority Christian Coalition Promise Keeper) democracy.

It is aligned to what Konrad Adenaur did in post Nazi Germany, whereby the right wing front against left wing social democracy was maintained in a way acceptable to McCarthyist/HUAC USA.

People are supposed to fear not being safe in some powerful majority mainstream and the liberal left is supposed to fear being on the side of minorities, or be marginalised with them.

As was said about 1930's Germany. First they came for the Jews and we did nothing. Then they came for those of the left wing political parties and we did nothing. Then they came for the unionists and w e did nothing. Then they came for the prostitutes and homosexuals and we did nothing. Then they came for those who said the rest of us still had civil liberties and human rights that should be defended and we were too scared to do anything.

[RWDB]

Get a grip everyone. The fourth reich is not imminent because Brash appoints a novelty shadow portfolio.

IS: I'm all for limiting the power of the majority. That's what being on the right is about: Individual rights before majority rights.

Don't see what that has to do with my comment though.

SPC: "...Those of the left wing political parties..."

Those of the *OTHER* left wing political parties, you mean?

[SPC]

Do you seriously think the conservative establishment of Germany chose to use a "left wing" party to suppress communism within and without Germany?

The post Nazi means used by the right are referred to here - the Christian Identity nationalism of the USA, first trialled in post war Germany to maintain the right wing front against communism during the Cold War. Now to sustain a way to manage national populations under a global market order.

[Idiot/Savant]

RWDB: and "individual rights before majority rights" is precisely what Mapp would describe as "political correctness".

[SPC]

I could add - to support my position, the American financiers who supplied credit to enable German business to purchase American goods. This until Dec 1941. One of them was Prescott Bush, GHWB's Daddy, son of Samuel Bush of the American Manfuacterers Association.

[RDW]

The fact is that the majority does have the power to impose their will, that's not something that's open to interpretation. Thankfully what the majority wishes to do is to be fair to those in the minority... what Wayne Mapp's real problem is is that when it comes to "political correctness" and views on minority rights, he's in the minority.

[rightkiwi]

RDW says: "The fact is that the majority does have the power to impose their will".

You are right that the majority can impose its power in the jungle but not in a democracy. A democracy is not merely about voting, with the majority ruling. Majorities are important, but a democracy is also about checks and balances on the majority.

For example, in the world's greatest democracy, the United States, the Supreme Court can and does strike down laws that have the support of the House and Senate, which represent the majority - and which have been signed by the President, who also represents the majority - if those laws undermine individual rights as protected by the constitution.

The barbarians running the National Party today seem to have forgotten this.