Bruce Logan: New Zealand's totalitarian mentality

The British philosopher Roger Scruton has claimed, “the first move the totalitarian mentality makes is to stop free-minded, open scholarship in pursuit of truth”.

Right now in New Zealand a totalitarian mentality in thrall to hate speech legislation is looking like the architect of bondage. Hate speech legislation is the tribal designer’s major tool as the diversity, inclusion and equity trinity (DIE) becomes Aotearoa’s civil religion; a religion that demands submission; mind first, body second. Hate speech legislation is necessary to punish the blasphemy of unbelief.

“Free-minded open scholarship” is not possible in the “decolonialising Aotearoa” because freedom is grounded in the existence of permanent and objective truth ordering the material world. DIE, instinctively suspicious of scientific method with its concept of falsifiability, would rewrite history to ideological fashion.

Graham Adams: Ardern enters the tragi-comic phase of her tenure

As Labour’s fortunes plummet, the Prime Minister’s behaviour is becoming erratic.

When Jacinda Ardern was asked by Newshub’s Jenna Lynch for her reaction to the disastrous results of the Newshub-Reid Research poll released on Sunday evening, the Prime Minister claimed: “Our starting point is not what we can do to change the polls. Our starting point is what can we do to support New Zealanders with the cost of living.”

She looked strained delivering this desperately pious response, but she certainly handled the question better than when a journalist asked last month how she felt about the “hiding Labour got at the local body elections”.