Growing up in the late 70’s and 80’s I could see the point of the Left in battling against the cultural conformity of that age, the age of Muldoon and, frankly, my parents.
A lot of it was stifling and eye-rolling. The Left, at least the New Left that sprang forward in the 1960’s, seemed to offer a lovely world free from such grim constraints.
As much drugs and fucking as you could want. Be free, Man! Don’t worry about the consequences, for without nasty old conservatives around to punish you there are no negative consequences. Just abort the result and walk away to start again in our free and liberal world.
Except that much of it was a lie. Having successfully destroyed the War Generation’s views of how the world should operate, both in terms of relatively rigid economic management and cultural norms, the New Left has gradually turned into exactly the sort of grim enforcers of conformity that they supposedly railed against.
Inside every Progressive is a totalitarian screaming to escape.
Given that the only way to enforce their desires is via such methods that should not be a surprise, yet somehow it always is for every Progressive movement, as many progressives targeted by their own forces soon discover – eh TERFS! Or perhaps the sad White children of the School Strike For Climate Auckland movement.
So I was pleased to see signs of a fightback against the Cultural Stalinists in in this article, The West’s revolutionary chickens coming home to roost, published as most decent stuff now is, on Substack:
Oriel College, Oxford, hastily abandoned its consultation on pulling down its statue of Cecil Rhodes after furious alumni cancelled £1.5 million in donations and threatened to withdraw even more.
When the National Trust started transforming its role from honouring the past to trashing it by hectoring visitors about properties said to be associated with colonialism and slavery, it started haemorrhaging members and its chairman was forced to resign.
Cambridge University’s vice-chancellor Professor Stephen Toope, who approved a website where students could anonymously report “micro-aggressions” by dons, was forced to retreat after tutors accused him of creating a “police state”.
…
In Britain, the fledgling TV station GB News, whose mission is to provide an alternative to brainwashed British broadcasting, was hit last week by a campaign of intimidation designed to shut it down as soon as it was launched.Under the impetus of a social injustice group called Stop Funding Hate, which targeted GB News with instant character assassination, various companies and institutions threatened to pull their ads on the network or were persuaded to hesitate before committing themselves to advertising there.
They got more than they were bargaining for, however, when the station’s bullish founder, Andrew Neil, used his new network to issue a blistering denunciation and threatened to turn the tables by boycotting them. Faced with the fury of consumers, some of these companies immediately backed down or said with hand on heart that they had never intended a boycott anyway, perish the thought.
But on the downside was this section:
If public figures make such a stand, however, people get braver. Which is why politicians and other high-profile cultural leaders should denounce this agenda. They should show they won’t tolerate it in their own organisations and will stand against those that do.
They are, however, all-too silent, terrified of provoking the inevitable titanic rows and name-calling which they believe would court electoral disaster. What such people fail to grasp, because all they can hear is the cacophonous media screeching about unstoppable cultural change, is that millions are appalled by these developments and will flock to the banner of those who oppose them.
I’ve highlighted that piece because a few weeks ago in the post about Karl DuFresne ripping into the National Party, former National Cabinet MP, Wayne Mapp made this comment:
Unlike the Republicans, the National Party does not do culture wars. The reason being that National is not nearly as uniformly conservative as the contemporary Republicans. As I am sure you know, National has always been an coalition of Liberals and Conservatives.
As I responded at the time, given the degree of sneering, backhanded contempt that has been exhibited on this blog and elsewhere by “Liberals” like Mapp towards Conservatives, those days of coalition may be coming to an end, especially since one would have to ask exactly what National Party “Conservatives” have conserved about NZ over the last fifty years?
But perhaps a more appropriate quote to deliver to such people would be the one from Leon Trotsky:
You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.
No Minister 
Perhaps Dr Mappe could explain what is a ‘culture war’ and enlighten me as to which ones have been engaged in by the Republican Party.
According to Wiki, Dr Mappe seems to have declared National stands for nothing on any issue of importance.
The specific example I had in mind was the abortion debate (and related matters) in the US, which really has no parallel in NZ. Similarly the race debate has nothing like the intensity in New Zealand that it has in the US.
In the US the abortion debate seems to be a sharp divide between Republicans and Democrats. In New Zealand, National MP’s nave a variety off views, from quite liberal to quite conservative. Thus it is a subject that is not discussed in the National caucus, except to note that it is a conscience issue.
Tom, I have asked you in the past to try and keep personal attacks out of this blog.
I don’t think Mr Harawira would agree with you.
If you ever get personally attacked by me, Wayne, you’ll know the difference between that and this post.
As far as this is concerned I cannot see that it was a personal attack. I quoted what I thought was an important point by a British writer about public figures often failing to take a stand against any of the Left-Wing ideas she listed. I then referred back to your old comment about National not engaging in “culture wars” since you are the most prominent National Party member commenting here and I expected you might have something to say about that, as you have.
If the “attack” is me remarking upon your “sneering, backhanded contempt” towards right-wing conservatives like me, then I stand by that comment since I think you have done that on multiple occasions, both here and on other Right-wing blogs, not least in constantly labelling us as “fringe” people who shall be ignored, an attack I don’t see you making against the Greens or Chris Trotter for example.
Luckily I have never taken your comments as being a personal attack, but then I never spent fifteen years in Parliament so perhaps have developed a thicker skin.