David Round: Thoughts for our Time - Article 4

Asylum seekers and refugees are in the news once more; not only in Europe, where popular exasperation at governments’ betrayal of their own citizens is increasingly openly expressed, but even in our own country. Ministers are talking of new legislation to allow electronic monitoring. Needless to say, numerous groups who make their comfortable livings out of being nice to refugees and asylum seekers are deeply concerned that we may not be welcoming enough.

One would like to think that most of these concerned nice people are also concerned about homelessness and deprivation among our own countrymen. In that case, though, it would surely be fair to ask why they do not make it their priority to alleviate miseries that already exist here. Charity does, after all, begin at home. But, just like Dickens’ Mrs Jellyby, these people are too busy displaying their own virtue and assisting strangers from Borrioboola-Gha to worry about their fellow citizens.

The New Zealand public, of course, foots the bill incurred by these compassionate humanitarian poses. Presumably, the professional carers still believe that New Zealand has more money and resources than it knows what to do with; an inexhaustible or at least very large stock of funds, empty houses and love, just waiting to be lavished on an equally inexhaustible number of the world’s waifs and strays.

God forgive me, but I cannot but wonder occasionally what Jesus would have said if He were living today. Hospitality to strangers and those in need is undoubtedly a noble sentiment; but if the consequences were national bankruptcy and civil war ~ not to mention the fact that, in Europe, certainly, many of these uninvited strangers are actively hostile to His own teachings ~ would He really have insisted that we let them in?

(It could well be argued, of course, that Jesus maintained that His kingdom was ‘not of this world’; His preaching was never intended as a blueprint for governments, but for individual salvation. He preached obedience to Caesar; He never attempted to tell Caesar what to do. )

But in any case, the Catholic Church, at least, has long recognised that many of Jesus’ precepts are ‘counsels of perfection’, admirable rules for the saintly but completely impossible to follow in any coherent state. Jesus told us to turn the other cheek and forgive wrongs done to us, even to the extent of not defending ourselves if we were sued at law; indeed, in that situation we should give the plaintiff even more than he demanded! To be so utterly passive would inevitably lead to a society ruled by the worst of criminals. When he advised that if a man compel you to walk with him for one mile, you should walk with him for two, He was referring to the Roman law which entitled any Roman soldier to order any non-Roman citizen to carry his heavy gear for him for one mile, but no more. He was advising us, in fact, to cooperate with foreign occupying armies, and indeed with the oppression they represent! And we should of course render unto Caesar whatever taxes he demands.

He said, of course, that those who live by the sword would perish by the sword. Alas, that may be true; but the corollary of that is not that those who do not live by the sword will die peacefully of old age in their beds. No. Those who live by the sword may perish by the sword; but, as His own example taught us, those who do not live by the sword will perish on the cross.

Love your enemy. Turn the other cheek. Not much encouragement there for the suffering people of...anywhere. What happens to human populations who do that?

Human nature being what it is, no coherent society can be run according to the precepts of Christian perfection. Only saints can live perfect Christian lives. The rest of us live in the real world, where generous impulses simply have to be tempered by the realities of human nature and limited resources.

Those considerations aside, there is something else we should also remember before we leap to apply counsels of Christian perfection to complex modern problems; and that is that ~ as our friends on the left constantly remind us ~ we are a secular country without any established religion. We are of course the heirs to a long and splendid Christian tradition, and our culture would be much the poorer without the fair-mindedness and charity of the Christian tradition; but for all that, for good or ill, this country has no established religion. The law does not compel us to attend church; we are not legally obliged to love our neighbours as ourselves. Helen Clark, when Prime Minister, even refused to allow grace to be said at a state banquet in the Beehive when our late queen was present, ‘because we are a secular society’.

(Let us always remember, though, George Bernard Shaw’s observation that we live in an age when compulsory attendance at church has been replaced by compulsory vaccination!)

If we have no religious establishment, then, it follows that we are under no duty to pursue any particular political policy because it is (allegedly) required by one religion or another.

Given the very unimpressive quality of many of the clergy of our declining mainstream Christian churches, that is probably just as well.

But getting back to immigration ~ it is increasingly difficult to maintain that New Zealand is a prosperous country. Most of us still enjoy a pretty good standard of living, but our nation is increasingly living beyond its means. At the same time, the whole world that we have known for so long is falling apart. There is a very serious war in the Ukraine, a proxy war between Russia and the West, and Western Europe seems hell-bent on making it an open war with Russia. Another and more serious military confrontation between Israel and Iran seems very likely, and who knows what else will happen in that birthplace of the Abrahamic religions? What happens if the Strait of Hormuz is closed to oil tankers? Some American generals are openly talking of war with China by next year. Certainly trouble seems to be brewing there. BRICS is undermining the United States dollar and United States power; the United States and Western Europe are floundering in incomprehensible amounts of debt, and a worldwide financial calamity at least as bad as the Great Depression seems inevitable very soon. Serious civil tumult threatens important parts of Western Europe, and perhaps the United States. Water wars loom between Ethiopia and its downstream neighbours, and between those two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan. Everywhere there are resource shortages, harvest failures and climate calamities. Farming leaders here have already raised the serious possibility that New Zealand might be dropped off the end of international supply chains, as shipping companies decide that it is just not worth while to sail this far.

All these things are getting worse, not better. It is surely a near certainty that New Zealand’s international tourism, as large a source of our overseas income as dairying, will very likely dry up in the next several years. No-one will be able to afford to fly to the other side of the world for a little break.

It is also highly likely, surely, that as these various calamities occur and rebound on each other, we will come under much more pressure to take populations fleeing from their own countries to somewhere just a little bit safer. What will our attitude be to that?

New Zealand is only going to survive, even as a half-viable nation, by being a lot more hard-hearted than it has been up until now. It is sad to say this, because much of our national self-image is of generous and hospitable people. That was only possible, though, in an earlier and different age, when we were richer, our population was smaller, and the rest of the world was quieter and much further away. Things are different now. Apart from anything else, we have probably already reached, if not actually exceeded, our own long-term sustainable population level. One can fit only so many people into a lifeboat. We are the lucky ones. We should feel lucky, but there is no need to feel guilty.

Generosity is a noble thing, but it, and its close relation Gullibility, can be just as fatal to an individual or a society as any other virtue.

Sir John Key is said to have said that all New Zealanders are just a little bit socialist. Perhaps we are; and that might be better than being too selfish. But as Mrs Thatcher undoubtedly said, the trouble with socialists is that they eventually run out of other people’s money.

There must be a happy medium.

To be continued…

David Round, a sixth generation South Islander and committed conservationist, is an author, a constitutional and Treaty expert, and a former law lecturer at the University of Canterbury.