Part of his stated reasons for getting into politics is to restore the country back to what he considers the “good old days” when he was growing up. He wants his grandchildren to enjoy the same benefits he enjoyed, and so his goal requires rolling back some of the more insane policies accrued over the decades.
This all sounds very… right wing. Or at least conservative. Restoration of a golden era. Preservation of time-worn traditions. These concepts are what most people consider right-wing thought. But if Henry is searching for a right-wing political party to join, then he will search in vain. There is no right wing in this country. There is only one Left, which is orbited by different shades of the confused pseudo-left.
Actually, to be politically confused is the definition of a libertarian. So, perhaps ACT was a good fit for Henry. Libertarians are confused because they think power can limit itself. This philosophy can be dismissed with a single question: how will you force the state to limit its power? This question is about sovereignty. If the state can be forced to limit its power, then the state is not sovereign. If you can limit the state, then you are the sovereign. Obviously, there is no higher power than the state; therefore, the libertarian fails. You cannot make power disappear.
As libertarians, the function of the ACT Party is to occupy the political space of the “right wing” while not actually being right-wing in any way. ACT appears to be a right-wing party because its talking points advocate for smaller government, which is ostensibly a right-wing ideal. But, since there is no power higher than the state, ACT can be left alone to burn all its political energy tilting at these windmills forever and never achieve its goal. In other words, ACT is the perfect containment vehicle for right-wing people who genuinely desire change but don’t understand the system. Like Henry.
What about NZ First? Surely the party of Winston Peters is a “right-wing” party, or at least “nationalist”? Sorry, NZ First is neither right-wing nor nationalist. Ask any NZ First MP for their definition of a New Zealander, and all you will hear is some version of: a New Zealander is any citizen who shares equal rights under one law, regardless of ethnicity. In other words, a New Zealander is someone who holds a legal piece of paper. This is civic nationalism, not nationalism. And there is an important difference.
Nationalism, from the root Latin word natio, meaning a race of people, is the idea that the nation (the extended family) is the most important level of social ties. Nationalism is not racism or a love of the same. It is a love of difference. But difference is much more than just a preference for your own food, music or culture. Difference is also a metaphysic. Difference is at the foundation of what it is to be a thing at all.
Civic nationalism is a bit like having a snooze button on a smoke alarm. Civic nationalism is the idea that an idea can be a person’s primary identity. The problem with civic nationalism is that it’s not easy to enforce a purely idea-based notion of citizenship. In practice, a civic nationalist system becomes “magic soil nationalism”, in which anyone who can physically move their body into New Zealand magically gets to be a New Zealander. I’m sure you can see how this can become a problem.
So, what about the National Party? Sorry, no dice again. National is a conservative party, which sounds right-wing, but that’s because your brain is broken. To see why, ask what conservatives are trying to conserve. A lot of people believe what is being conserved is traditions and the wisdom of those who came before us. But the conservative never seems to conserve these things because the true tradition they are conserving is liberalism, and liberalism is a philosophy of revolution known as Leftism.
Conservatism is a more radically Leftist position than open Leftism. The open Left is a permanent state of revolution, tearing down every tradition. But the moment Leftists succeed on any point, conservatives step in to lock in the Left’s gains, fighting to the death to conserve them. Conservatism operates as a cynical tool of the established order to protect the established order. The National Party is not your friend if you are genuinely right-wing.
But I should define my terms. What is the right wing?
At its core, the right wing simply means the restoration of strong property rights. A rightist is someone who believes in order, stability and security, all of which he considers synonyms. The essence of any rightist philosophy is the union of two forces: the engineering mentality, and the great historical legacy of classical and Victorian pre-democratic thought.
A rightist is not a communist, a fascist or even a libertarian. He is something much older, stranger and more powerful. Unlike the conservative, the rightist does not wish to go back to some nostalgic time or golden age, but to locate what is true and good and restore or reinvigorate it regardless of any contemporary prejudices against it. And the first task of a rightist is to take Jonathan Bowden’s advice and kill the liberal within yourself. Change comes from within.
This is what the right wing really means. And as such, there is no right-wing party in New Zealand, and there likely never has been. New Zealand was a left-wing project from the start. The story of British colonialism was a political battle between the “settlers” and the “missionaries”. The settlers shouldered the burden of building the new lands, which gave them considerable political influence in the colonies. But the missionaries always had more influence in London. And that’s what mattered.
Broadly speaking, settlers and missionaries drew their support back in Britain from the Tories and the Whigs, respectively. Whiggery operates from a linear view of historical progress rising from a dark past to enlightened modernity – a kind of secular version of God’s providence. Toryism also viewed history as trending towards enlightenment, but it believed the driving factor was material progress, not spiritual progress. These different views coloured how the settlers and missionaries competed over the best way to govern the colonies.
Occasionally, this tension burst into real warfare. The American revolutionaries, for example, were all Whigs, which meant the Revolutionary War was a continuation of British politics by other means. In fact, two of the leading British generals in that war, William Howe and Lord Cornwallis, were Whigs. Their interest in that war was firstly to ensure the power of their party back in London, which is why General Howe didn’t follow through on the Battle of Bunker Hill by finishing off the defeated revolutionaries. Doing so would have hurt the influence of the Whig Party.
The same tension appeared in New Zealand. The signing of the Treaty of Waitangi was a characteristically Whig victory. The missionaries in New Zealand won the argument eight years before the Treaty was signed when the Whigs passed the Great Reform Act of 1832. The Act weakened the Tories by extending the electorate and increasing the influence of the middle classes. It also gave the missionaries more confidence to enact their Whiggish “liberalism” in the colonies.
The missionaries and Whigs went from victory to victory in the 20th century. Because the settlers were the main political enemy of the missionaries, the act of settling was eventually outlawed in New Zealand. The typically Whig ideology of conservation made it impossible to build anything in this country. Today, a third of New Zealand’s land is little more than a nature reserve for animals, lizards and tourists.
Then came the First World War, which resulted in a huge wartime death toll, high inflation and crippling death and income taxes. Those hurt the most, both in the per capita death toll and the financial disaster, were the political supporters of the settlers, the Tory right wing in Britain. The old civilisation died, and the Whiggish democratic world in which we now live began to take its full form. The centre of the Anglo-American order then moved to Washington after 1918.
The Second World War set this political victory in concrete. The correct interpretation of WWII is that America conquered Europe to destroy the traditional Christian West, which was always the mission of the Protestant Whigs. As I have said elsewhere, the West died on 2 February 1943 with the fall of Stalingrad. After the farcical Nuremberg trials, it effectively became illegal to be genuinely right-wing.
Fast-forward to 2026, and Paul Henry’s dream of restoring New Zealand is revealed to be a pipe dream. There is no right wing. Henry was forced to choose between various types of overt and covert Leftists and the confused libertarians.
But his heart is in the right place (no pun intended). After all, every regime ends. Unfortunately, this one won’t end soon, and Henry’s grandchildren will almost certainly live in a future that is more “egalitarian”, more broken, and far, far more communist than today.
The right wing will return, but only after we kill the liberal within ourselves.
Nathan Smith is a British-born New Zealand journalist, writer, and editor. This article was sourced HERE
Actually, to be politically confused is the definition of a libertarian. So, perhaps ACT was a good fit for Henry. Libertarians are confused because they think power can limit itself. This philosophy can be dismissed with a single question: how will you force the state to limit its power? This question is about sovereignty. If the state can be forced to limit its power, then the state is not sovereign. If you can limit the state, then you are the sovereign. Obviously, there is no higher power than the state; therefore, the libertarian fails. You cannot make power disappear.
As libertarians, the function of the ACT Party is to occupy the political space of the “right wing” while not actually being right-wing in any way. ACT appears to be a right-wing party because its talking points advocate for smaller government, which is ostensibly a right-wing ideal. But, since there is no power higher than the state, ACT can be left alone to burn all its political energy tilting at these windmills forever and never achieve its goal. In other words, ACT is the perfect containment vehicle for right-wing people who genuinely desire change but don’t understand the system. Like Henry.
What about NZ First? Surely the party of Winston Peters is a “right-wing” party, or at least “nationalist”? Sorry, NZ First is neither right-wing nor nationalist. Ask any NZ First MP for their definition of a New Zealander, and all you will hear is some version of: a New Zealander is any citizen who shares equal rights under one law, regardless of ethnicity. In other words, a New Zealander is someone who holds a legal piece of paper. This is civic nationalism, not nationalism. And there is an important difference.
Nationalism, from the root Latin word natio, meaning a race of people, is the idea that the nation (the extended family) is the most important level of social ties. Nationalism is not racism or a love of the same. It is a love of difference. But difference is much more than just a preference for your own food, music or culture. Difference is also a metaphysic. Difference is at the foundation of what it is to be a thing at all.
Civic nationalism is a bit like having a snooze button on a smoke alarm. Civic nationalism is the idea that an idea can be a person’s primary identity. The problem with civic nationalism is that it’s not easy to enforce a purely idea-based notion of citizenship. In practice, a civic nationalist system becomes “magic soil nationalism”, in which anyone who can physically move their body into New Zealand magically gets to be a New Zealander. I’m sure you can see how this can become a problem.
So, what about the National Party? Sorry, no dice again. National is a conservative party, which sounds right-wing, but that’s because your brain is broken. To see why, ask what conservatives are trying to conserve. A lot of people believe what is being conserved is traditions and the wisdom of those who came before us. But the conservative never seems to conserve these things because the true tradition they are conserving is liberalism, and liberalism is a philosophy of revolution known as Leftism.
Conservatism is a more radically Leftist position than open Leftism. The open Left is a permanent state of revolution, tearing down every tradition. But the moment Leftists succeed on any point, conservatives step in to lock in the Left’s gains, fighting to the death to conserve them. Conservatism operates as a cynical tool of the established order to protect the established order. The National Party is not your friend if you are genuinely right-wing.
But I should define my terms. What is the right wing?
At its core, the right wing simply means the restoration of strong property rights. A rightist is someone who believes in order, stability and security, all of which he considers synonyms. The essence of any rightist philosophy is the union of two forces: the engineering mentality, and the great historical legacy of classical and Victorian pre-democratic thought.
A rightist is not a communist, a fascist or even a libertarian. He is something much older, stranger and more powerful. Unlike the conservative, the rightist does not wish to go back to some nostalgic time or golden age, but to locate what is true and good and restore or reinvigorate it regardless of any contemporary prejudices against it. And the first task of a rightist is to take Jonathan Bowden’s advice and kill the liberal within yourself. Change comes from within.
This is what the right wing really means. And as such, there is no right-wing party in New Zealand, and there likely never has been. New Zealand was a left-wing project from the start. The story of British colonialism was a political battle between the “settlers” and the “missionaries”. The settlers shouldered the burden of building the new lands, which gave them considerable political influence in the colonies. But the missionaries always had more influence in London. And that’s what mattered.
Broadly speaking, settlers and missionaries drew their support back in Britain from the Tories and the Whigs, respectively. Whiggery operates from a linear view of historical progress rising from a dark past to enlightened modernity – a kind of secular version of God’s providence. Toryism also viewed history as trending towards enlightenment, but it believed the driving factor was material progress, not spiritual progress. These different views coloured how the settlers and missionaries competed over the best way to govern the colonies.
Occasionally, this tension burst into real warfare. The American revolutionaries, for example, were all Whigs, which meant the Revolutionary War was a continuation of British politics by other means. In fact, two of the leading British generals in that war, William Howe and Lord Cornwallis, were Whigs. Their interest in that war was firstly to ensure the power of their party back in London, which is why General Howe didn’t follow through on the Battle of Bunker Hill by finishing off the defeated revolutionaries. Doing so would have hurt the influence of the Whig Party.
The same tension appeared in New Zealand. The signing of the Treaty of Waitangi was a characteristically Whig victory. The missionaries in New Zealand won the argument eight years before the Treaty was signed when the Whigs passed the Great Reform Act of 1832. The Act weakened the Tories by extending the electorate and increasing the influence of the middle classes. It also gave the missionaries more confidence to enact their Whiggish “liberalism” in the colonies.
The missionaries and Whigs went from victory to victory in the 20th century. Because the settlers were the main political enemy of the missionaries, the act of settling was eventually outlawed in New Zealand. The typically Whig ideology of conservation made it impossible to build anything in this country. Today, a third of New Zealand’s land is little more than a nature reserve for animals, lizards and tourists.
Then came the First World War, which resulted in a huge wartime death toll, high inflation and crippling death and income taxes. Those hurt the most, both in the per capita death toll and the financial disaster, were the political supporters of the settlers, the Tory right wing in Britain. The old civilisation died, and the Whiggish democratic world in which we now live began to take its full form. The centre of the Anglo-American order then moved to Washington after 1918.
The Second World War set this political victory in concrete. The correct interpretation of WWII is that America conquered Europe to destroy the traditional Christian West, which was always the mission of the Protestant Whigs. As I have said elsewhere, the West died on 2 February 1943 with the fall of Stalingrad. After the farcical Nuremberg trials, it effectively became illegal to be genuinely right-wing.
Fast-forward to 2026, and Paul Henry’s dream of restoring New Zealand is revealed to be a pipe dream. There is no right wing. Henry was forced to choose between various types of overt and covert Leftists and the confused libertarians.
But his heart is in the right place (no pun intended). After all, every regime ends. Unfortunately, this one won’t end soon, and Henry’s grandchildren will almost certainly live in a future that is more “egalitarian”, more broken, and far, far more communist than today.
The right wing will return, but only after we kill the liberal within ourselves.
Nathan Smith is a British-born New Zealand journalist, writer, and editor. This article was sourced HERE
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