Caleb Anderson: The Cost of Appeasement

The word appeasement has come to be associated in the minds of most people with the extraordinary efforts of Neville Chamberlain to avoid a second world war in Europe.  Quite evidently his efforts at appeasement did not work ... but simply provided Hitler with the time to prepare for what was inevitable in the minds of others.

More generally appeasement might be described as follows.

Merriam-Webster

https://www.merriam-webster.com › dictionary › appease

1. pacify, conciliate; especially : to make concessions to (someone, such as an aggressor or a critic) often at the sacrifice of principles.

 

Collins Dictionary

https://www.collinsdictionary.com › dictionary › appeas...

Appeasement means giving people what they want to prevent them from harming you or being angry with you.

Cambridge Dictionary

https://dictionary.cambridge.org › dictionary › appease...

The act of giving the opposing side in an argument or war an advantage that they have demanded, in order to prevent further disagreement.

 

It might be argued that for generations now New Zealand's political elites have engaged in a policy of appeasement in acceding to the demands of the Treaty's most radical proponents.  

 

In keeping the peace in the immediate, have they bought the problem we now face?  

 

Have concessions, here and there, simply played into the hands of those whose ultimate intentions are far more radical than anyone can imagine?

 

Parading Jim Bolger, Jenny Shipley, John Key, Geoffrey Palmer, and Chris Finlayson as apologists for the indulgences of our political elite is far from reassuring.  In the minds of a growing number of people, they seem to have been more the cause of the  problem than the solution.  

 

No-one with the influence to bring reason and forethought to this debate has ever been willing to bear the political cost. The line has never been drawn in the sand. No one (with influence) has ever said ...  thus far and no further, and then stayed the course.  The can has been perpetually kicked down the road until there is no more road left.

 

Democracy and equal citizenship are fragile beasts and they have never come cheap. 

 

I guess the questions now might be ... What will the cost of democracy be to this (and coming) generations of New Zealanders? Will we be willing to pay it? 

 

In answer to the first question possibly more than we can imagine, and to the second very possibly not.

 

Perhaps the rooster has finally come home to roost. 

Caleb Anderson, a graduate history, economics, psychotherapy and theology, has been an educator for over thirty years, twenty as a school principal.