Something Else

Right-wing Terrorist: Before the world learned that the Oslo bomb had been detonated by Anders Behring Breivik the global news media correctly described the event as a terrorist attack. But, once it became clear the perpetrator was a Norwegian national, his carefully planned military mission suddenly became something else. Breivik himself became "the gunman", while his Labour Youth targets became the "teenage" victims of a "shooting spree" or "deadly rampage". Why does the Western media find it so hard to call Breivik's actions by their proper name: terrorism?

HOW EASILY WE ACCEPT the peculiar moral alchemy of our masters. Their effortless, almost magical power to transmute the Norwegian tragedy into something else; something quite distinct from a terrible and despicable act of political terrorism.

Anders Behring Breivik is indisputably a political terrorist, and the Norwegian authorities have treated him as such. He is being tried for terrorism.

So, why have governments and newspaper editors around the world shied away from using the words “terrorism” and “terrorist” to describe the murderous acts of this 32-year-old ultra-nationalist, anti-socialist, cultural exclusionist?

Over and over again we hear and read about Breivik as “the gunman” who went on a shooting “rampage” or “spree”.

Breivik’s victims have been similarly misrepresented. These young people weren’t gunned down for being “teenagers”, and Utoya Island wasn’t chosen simply because it was a “summer camp”. Breivik’s target was the annual gathering of the youth wing of the Norwegian Labour Party – the dominant partner in Norway’s left-wing coalition government.

In court, Breivik calmly explained that he had targeted the Utoya Island gathering quite deliberately. Partly to punish the Labour-led government for its promotion of multiculturalism. Partly to wipe out the next generation of Labour Party leaders and impede the recruitment of replacements.

And yet, all over the English-speaking world, these decisive facts of Breivik’s terrorism are blurred, smudged – even erased. Politicians and journalists ask us instead to focus on “the gunman’s” singularity. They speculate about his mental state, emphasise the extreme or “fantastic” character of his beliefs, and do everything within their power to distance Breivik from what they consider to be “normal” political activity.

HOW DIFFERENT things were in that confused hour before the terrorist’s Norwegian ethnicity was confirmed.

Prior to this crucial confirmation, all the talk had been about “Islamist terrorism”. Experts from far away countries effortlessly detected Al Qaida’s “signature” among the Oslo rubble. In the fog of war, well before all the facts were known, nobody seemed in any doubt that they were looking at an act of terrorism.

So, why did the language and the ontological perspective change when the world discovered that Norway wasn’t Al Qaida’s latest victim after all, but that it was, in fact, dealing with an act of home-grown terrorism?

Why do the Western World’s opinion-shapers feel so uncomfortable applying the word “terrorism” to anything other than the deadly acts of Islamist extremists?

THE MOST OBVIOUS ANSWER is that it is difficult to wage a “Global War on Terror” (GWOT) if the terroristic “them” have not been clearly, unequivocally, culturally and religiously distinguished from the innocent “us”.

Terrorists are supposed to come from hot desert countries, have brown skins and shout “Allahu Akbar!” They are not supposed to be blond-haired, blue-eyed, and, like the medieval Knights Templar, make war in the absolute certainty that “God wills it!”

Our masters become distinctly uncomfortable when they realise that Anders Breivik clearly considers himself a co-belligerent in GWOT. While Norway’s soldiers fight the Taliban alongside their American, British and New Zealand comrades in Afghanistan, Breivik’s new Knights Templar are pledged to unleash death and destruction on Islam’s treacherous fifth-columnists back home.

In the eyes of this uncompromising nationalist, Norway’s Labour prime-minister, Jens Stoltenberg, is indistinguishable from Vidkun Quisling – the infamous fifth-columnist who headed-up the Norwegian puppet-government imposed by the Nazis in 1940.

We are repelled by his moral insouciance, but wouldn’t our own special forces personnel, after a night of carnage in the streets and alleyways of Kabul, wearily concede that their actions had been, to use Breivik’s own words, “atrocious – but necessary”.

THE NEED to label Breivik’s home-grown terrorism “something else” is explained by the painful fact that about the only thing that distinguishes his massacre from the West’s is authority and geography.

Like the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, Breivik set out on a military mission to achieve a number of clear political objectives. The horror he unleashed on Utoya Island appalled the world. So, why is the world not equally appalled when an American drone obliterates a Pakistani compound? Or a Nato gunship cuts down 68 Afghan wedding guests in Helmand province?

Significantly, Breivik asked his police captors if he could wear a uniform to his arraignment. It’s as if he was challenging us to admit that, when shielded by the emblems of authority, terrorism is always “something else”.

This essay was originally published in The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 29 July 2011.

Old Lies

Hard Man: The traditional warrior virtues which the Waiariki MP, Te Ururoa Flavell, so obviously prizes make no allowances for the mental frailties to which all human-beings are heir. Suicide cannot be shaken out of society. Mr Flavell's proposed "hard stance" can only make the problem of youth suicide worse.

THE VENEER of modernity which covers New Zealand is very thin. Well-educated bureaucrats in government ministries, and well-meaning volunteers in NGOs strive to enlighten the general public on everything from the rudiments of safe driving and safe sex, to the complexities of competing electoral systems and the maintenance of mental health. And then, just when they’re certain the country is making progress, along comes somebody like the MP for Waiariki, Te Ururoa Flavell, and proves them wrong.

To say that Mr Flavell’s column in the Rotorua Daily Post was wilfully ignorant, socially destructive and deeply wounding to the families and friends of suicide victims does scant justice to its general offensiveness.

Responding to the suicides of ten young people in Kawerau over the past year, and two more in the Bay of Plenty this past week, Mr Flavell wrote:

“I say we are at a point where we say, ‘that’s it, no more. No more suicides.”

This statement would have been inane enough in its own right – akin to saying: “That’s it, no more. No more rain.” But Flavell went on to suggest a solution which was much, much worse.

“Perhaps we should make a very hard stand with this”, wrote Flavell. “If a child commits suicide, let us consider not celebrating their lives on our marae; perhaps bury them at the entrance of the cemetery so their deaths will be condemned by the people.”

But why stop there, Mr Flavell? Why not bury them at the cross-roads with a wooden stake through their heart?

How the more educated and progressive members of the Maori community must have recoiled from Mr Flavell’s statements. Not only because they were so mind-bogglingly ill-informed, cruel and counter-productive, but because they pushed into the unforgiving sunlight an aspect of Maori culture that most Pakeha knew nothing about: the powerful belief that suicide is “hara” – sinful – and a cause for shame among whanau and hapu.

European culture held very similar views about suicide well into the 20^th Century. Indeed, it is only in the last 50-60 years that the act of suicide ceased to be a crime. It is also a relatively simple matter to locate graveyards in New Zealand where the tombstones of suicides stand outside the walls – testimony to the church’s refusal to bury their bodies in hallowed ground.

In the last 40 years, however, medical science has driven legal persecution and religious superstition out of the context in which suicide is considered. In all but the most benighted of communities, Pakeha New Zealanders have learned to view suicide as the ultimate manifestation of acute clinical depression. Considerable effort and a great deal of money has been invested in lifting the age-old social stigma from depression sufferers. We are encouraged to look for the danger signs in our loved ones, to talk with them openly and honestly about their illness, and to seek out professional help.

Clearly, only a little of this enlightened attitude towards suicide and clinical depression has filtered through to the Maori community. Whether the suicide stigma predates European contact, or is just one more of the pernicious legacies of the Christian missionaries, there is in Maoridom a woeful lack of understanding about the causes and cures for suicidal behaviour.

Woeful, and in the case of Mr Flavell himself, wilful.

This, after all, is the MP who announced to the readers of the Rotorua Daily Post that he had, only a week before, attended a forum on suicide, where he listened to the “insights” of “some experts in this field”. He was also aware of the National Conference on Suicide that had taken place the week before that. Notwithstanding these opportunities to listen and learn, Mr Flavell informed his readers that:

“From what I have heard, one is almost wasting time asking why this happens.”

Really, Mr Flavell? And was that because the answers provided were complex and difficult? Did they point you in the direction of families in which the free sharing of personal feelings and problems was discouraged? Was it because there was much discussion in those forums about the crucial contribution such social evils as educational failure, joblessness, alcohol, drug addiction and domestic violence make to the suicide statistics? Did the “experts in this field” refuse to provide you with the simple/simplistic solutions you were demanding? Is that why you retreated – as your Maori Party leader, Tariana Turia, so often does – back into the old Maori world of mysticism and magic? A world in which suicide victims and their whanau were cursed, cast out and denied the spiritual protection of the urupa?

Seldom has the redeeming power of science and education been so urgently required than in those Maori communities where the stigma of suicide still casts its dark shadow. In spite of Mr Flavell’s obvious convictions to the contrary, suicide is not something that can be shaken or shamed out of a person. Nor is clinical depression a condition that can be cured by a brusque, emotionally-stunted man grabbing the sufferer by the shoulders and ordering him to “toughen-up”.

Traditional Maori society placed enormous stock by the manly virtues of the warrior. Stoicism, courage, coolness under fire and the ability to bounce back – these were the qualities the elders looked for among the rising generation. And they are admirable qualities. But, sadly, not everyone is lucky enough to be blessed with them. In every society there are those who cannot simply bounce back. That does not make them less valuable or less needful of their community’s understanding and assistance.

Taking a “hard stance” on suicide, Mr Flavell, will bring only more misery – not less.

This essay is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

Why?

Utoya Island, Norway, Friday, 22 July 2011: A calculated act of political terror. 

SIXTY-EIGHT idealistic young Norwegians shot to death with chilling efficiency. Eight of their compatriots blown to pieces by a massive car-bomb in the Norwegian capital. What other question can there be but: “Why?”

The answer is frighteningly straight-forward: both the bombing and the shootings were carefully calculated acts of political terror.

The man Norwegian authorities have charged with these atrocities, a 32-year-old businessman named Anders Behring Breivik, is a self-confessed Christian and an ardent Norwegian nationalist. Between 1999 and 2005 he was a “youth member” of the Norwegian Progress Party – a party whose principles and policies closely align with those of America’s “tea partiers” and New Zealand’s Act Party.

Breivik’s resignation from the Progress Party was in reaction to the severe internal stresses brought on by the often bitter debates over how far the party should go to curb the influx of Muslim immigrants to Norway.

Throughout the 1990s the Progress Party was torn apart by splits and divisions over the immigration issue. Breivik was a supporter of those he described as the “idealistic” faction of the party: hardliners who despised the “multiculturalism” preached by the Norwegian Left, and who were committed to restoring the racially homogeneous Norwegian society of the 1950s and 60s.

It was the Progress Party’s radical ideas on race, and the extreme positions adopted by some of the leading protagonists of the anti-immigration faction, which led Norway’s other political parties to declare it persona non grata in that country’s generally tolerant and liberal political culture.

Opposition to the Progress Party’s racial and religious prejudice was most pronounced among the left-leaning Labour and Green parties – both of whom strongly promoted the ideal of multicultural tolerance. But even Norway’s centrist and conservative parties were put off by the Progress Party’s extremism and excluded it from the real and potential governing coalitions of the centre-right.

Essentially, the entire Norwegian political class (aided by the news media) came together to mount an effective political boycott of the Progress Party.

The only problem with this strategy of exclusion was that the Progress Party was not simply an anti-immigration party. In Norway’s still very strong social-democratic political culture the Progress Party stood out as the only mass political movement whole-heartedly committed to introducing the policies of “free market” neo-liberalism.

By bringing together rural and provincial Norwegians antagonistic to the influx of non-white, non-Christian immigrants, with the growing number of young, urban-dwelling Norwegians chafing under the benign collectivism of Norway’s social-democratic institutions, the Progress Party had grown rapidly to become Norway’s second-largest political party after Labour.

The result has given rise to what writer and social-critic, Dr Chris Harris, has aptly described as a “civil cold war or cold civil war” in which upwards of one quarter of the population found its political beliefs and aspirations deliberately excluded from government.

Paradoxically, it may have been the Progress Party’s incremental movements towards the political centre (and thus towards participation in a future centre-right government) which set Breivik on his path towards political terrorism and mass murder.

IN SPITE OF looking like the healthy, blond-haired, blue-eyed young man any Norwegian mother would have been delighted to have as a son-in-law, Breivik had not made a conspicuous success of his life.

Aspiring to be part of Norway’s entrepreneurial elite, he’d tried his hand at several businesses but all had ended in failure. Refusing to abandon his dreams, he’d talked himself into “The Pillars” – one of Oslo’s leading masonic lodges. But even here, among the rich and the powerful, he could find no backers for the right-wing newspaper he’d hoped to launch. Lonely, frustrated and increasingly marginalised, Breivik was reduced to venting his spleen on right-wing social-media sites, and chatting on-line with the dark denizens of Europe’s neo-Nazi underworld.

And after them – who?

What triggered the final descent into practical planning: the amassing of fertiliser; the stockpiling of ammunition; the acquisition of a policeman’s uniform; we’ve yet to discover.

Did he find himself in an Oslo bar one evening, locked in conversation with a pretty young student attracted to his buffed six-foot frame and cute, cupid-bow smile? Did he feel the pangs of sexual yearning? Wonder if this girl might be the one? Only to ruin it all by getting into an argument about politics. Was it before or after she’d called him a racist pig that he noticed the Labour Youth logo on her T-shirt?

Did he imagine them all on Utoya Island? All those happy little Marxists rutting in their pup tents. Mocking a vengeful god with their easy fornication and treacherous tolerance of the filthy defilers of Norwegian purity.

Did he imagine all their Labour Party mentors, beavering away in their downtown Oslo offices, plotting yet more ruin for the Fatherland?

Well, he had a surprise for them.

And afterwards, Norway would never be the same.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 26 July 2011.

In Memoriam (For The Victims Of The Terrorist Attack Aganist The Norwegian Labour Party)

A Calculated Blow Against Norway's Future: Young Norwegians mourn the loss of their friends and comrades on Utoya Island. Anders Behring Breivik targeted the Norwegian Labour Party for its "treacherous" championing of multicultural tolerance.

I Think Continually Of Those Who Were Truly Great

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
See how these names are feted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life
Who wore at their hearts the fire's centre.
Born of the sun they travelled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

Stephen Spender

Poll Axed

Going Down?: Labour morale, boosted by the generally positive critical reception given to its proposed Capital Gains Tax, sustained a crushing blow when the One News Colmar Brunton poll showed the party plummeting seven percentage points to its worst result in a decade. But are the opinion polls methodologically sound? And, if they're not, who benefits most from the news media's failure to correct them?

TWENTY-SEVEN PERCENT: the results from the One News Colmar Brunton Poll fell upon Labour’s hopes like a sledge-hammer. Party members and supporters who, just days before, had been feeling proud and confident stared at the numbers in blank amazement. Everything they’d experienced since last Thursday’s tax-policy launch had reassured them that the Party’s plans were being well-received by the public. And yet, there they were, those wretched numbers: the worst in a decade.

It was all so demoralising. Why go on fighting? What was the point? When, in spite of most experts hailing Labour’s Capital Gains Tax (CGT) as not only a courageous and much-needed fillip to economic development, but also as a statement of basic fairness, the voting public simply turned their backs.

Such a savage rejection must surely mean that Labour and its supporters constitute an eccentric – almost cultish – subset of the New Zealand electorate? A sort of political Amish, whose beliefs and policies appear as outlandish to “Mainstream New Zealand” as the Amish’s horse-drawn carts and buggies?

That is certainly what Labour’s opponents would like its supporters to think. Which gives rise to the very troubling question: “Are opinion polls being used, quite deliberately, to demoralise the Government’s opponents?”

Prior to the events of the past fortnight in the United Kingdom, such a question would have reeked of the political paranoia usually associated with conspiracy theorists. But, after the revelations exposing the corruption and collusion which has for decades defined the relationship between Britain’s news media and her politicians, it is a question that merits some sort of answer.

Let’s begin with Colmar Brunton. Since at least 2004 there has been persuasive academic evidence that a statistical bias in Colmar Brunton’s sampling methods causes it to consistently overstate the support of the political Right.

The company’s telephone survey is conducted Saturday to Thursday evenings (inclusive). But, by conducting its polling mostly on weeknights, Colmar Brunton’s academic critics (Rob Salmond, Keith Rankin) argue that the company is much more likely to make contact with higher income-earners – men and women whose electoral choices traditionally favour the more conservative political parties.

This statistical bias could be eliminated if Colmar Brunton’s data was weighted to overcome the preponderance of higher income earners among its respondents. But, although Colmar Brunton weights its results to match Statistics New Zealand’s population data on age, gender, household size and ethnic origin, it does not weight them to match the income-spread of New Zealand’s voters.

And neither, it appears, do the other major polling agencies: Reid Research, DigiPoll and Roy Morgan.

There is, however, one polling agency that does weight its data for income – with startling results. The latest HorizonPoll, taken shortly after the Budget (24/5/11) presents a picture of the New Zealand political scene that is radically different from the picture presented by its competitors.

In HorizonPoll’s survey, support for the “Left Bloc” (Labour, Greens, NZ First,) stands at 43 percent; with the “Right Bloc” (National, Act, United Future, Maori Party) only just behind them on 42.7 percent support.

Admittedly, there are more differences in the HorizonPoll’s methodology than simply allowing for voter income. Even so, a news media motivated by a genuine desire to obtain the most accurate description of the electorate’s mood would surely be concerned by the startling discrepancies between the HorizonPoll’s results and the findings obtained using “standard”  methodologies.

Indeed, the only plausible explanation for not being concerned is that, from the perspective of this country’s largest media corporations, the “standard methodologies” are exerting a consistent and positive influence over the public’s political perceptions and voting intentions.

By portraying the contest between Right and Left blocs as a hopelessly one-sided horse-race, the “standard methodologies” obviate the need for a more detailed examination of, and a more even-handed debate about, the political alternatives currently on offer.

But surely, if opinion polls possess the power to alter our perceptions (and they do) then the methodologies sanctioned by their sponsors must be above suspicion?

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 22 July 2011.

Trick Questions

She'd Swear No Oath To An English King: Constance Markiewicz was the first woman elected to the British Parliament but was never seated because, in line with the nationalist and republican principles of the Sinn Fein Party, she refused to swear allegiance to the monarchy which had oppressed the Irish people since the 12th Century. The New Zealand Speaker's recent refusal to seat Hone Harawira until he swore allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II shows that the feudal traditions of our parliament still have teeth.

IT’S ONE of those trick trivia questions that always catches the pub-quiz whiz-kids off balance.

“Who was the first woman elected to the British House of Commons?”

Quick as a flash, all the amateur historians chime in with “Nancy Astor!” (the American-born Vicountess who famously declared: “Mr Churchill, if you were my husband I’d put poison in your tea.” To which Winston Churchill, even more famously, replied: “Madam, if you were my wife, I’d drink it.”)

The amateur historians would, however, be wrong.

Lady Astor was indeed the first woman to take up a seat in the House of Commons (she won her husband’s old constituency of Plymouth Sutton in a by-election in 1919) but she was not the first woman to win one.

That honour belongs to Constance Markiewicz, the Irish nationalist revolutionary, who won the constituency of Dublin St Patrick’s for the Irish nationalist party, Sinn Féin, in the British General Election of 1918.

That Constance Markiewicz never took her seat in the House of Commons was due entirely to her nationalist and revolutionary republican beliefs. As a champion of Irish independence from Great Britain and a staunch republican, she was not about to swear allegiance to an English king, or a monarchy which had oppressed her people since the 12^th Century.

And therein lies the insurmountable problem – as New Zealanders, witnessing the aborted swearing-in of a member of their own House of Representatives  93 years later, have discovered.

The Oath of Allegiance, like so many of the other feudal relics that still clutter this country’s constitutional arrangements, may seem to be nothing more than a harmless anachronism, but, when challenged, turns out to have a cutting edge as keen as any medieval broadsword.

LIKE IRELAND’S SINN FÉIN (“Ourselves Alone”), the newly-formed Mana Party is a revolutionary nationalist political movement seeking to bring about fundamental social, economic and political change within the framework of a constitutional monarchy.

To get around this central contradiction at the heart of Mana’s political project, it’s leader, Hone Harawira, is required to swear an oath, or make an affirmation, which he has no intention of honouring. Or, to put it more bluntly: before Mr Harawira can take up his parliamentary seat, the Speaker of the House, Dr Lockwood Smith, is requiring him to perjure himself.

The Mana Party leader is committed to establishing a bi-cultural Aotearoan republic, with the Treaty of Waitangi enshrined at the heart of its constitution.

Why, then, should he be required to “solemnly swear” to: “… be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Her heirs and successors, according to law. So help me God.”

The legal experts, like the Speaker, will argue that “the law is the law”. It’s a fair point, but it is also a profoundly hypocritical objection.

For many years, now, Members of Parliament who have not been able, in good conscience, to swear an oath before God, have been able to make an affirmation instead. Why then, if our legislators are willing to make provision for the tender consciences of atheists, have they not extended the same courtesy to republicans?

We know how swiftly the House of Representatives can act when it wants to (just ask the executives of Warner Bros.) so why doesn’t it allow Mr Harawira to swear to:

“ … [B]e faithful and bear true allegiance to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, that I will be honest and forthright in my efforts to advance the rights of the people of Tai Tokerau, that I will do my utmost to help all Maori people become full empowered citizens of this land and that I will do whatever I can to reduce inequalities in this country, so that all may one day be proud to call Aotearoa home.”

THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE, in deciding to stand firm on the Oath of Allegiance, has brought the evolving tradition of MPs swearing or affirming allegiance to Treaty, Nation, Democracy and Queen to an abrupt halt.

This is regrettable. Because, by re-infusing the Oath with all of its ancient, feudatory power, Dr Smith may end up driving the Mana Party to adopt the tactics of Sinn Féin in 1918.

Rather than take up her seat in the King’s parliament, Countess Markiewicz, along with dozens of other Irish MPs elected under Sinn Féin’s banner, unilaterally constituted themselves as the Dáil Éireann – the first parliament of the Irish Republic.

Thus began the Irish War of Independence.

JUST AS POWERFUL CURRENTS of water have carved out the courses of Canterbury’s rivers, powerful currents of history are carving out the future contours of the New Zealand state.

It will indeed be ironic if future pub-quiz whiz-kids identify Dr Lockwood Smith as the man whose neo-colonialist actions sparked the birth of the Bicultural Republic of Aotearoa.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 19 July 2011.

The Price We Pay For Civilisation

A Winning Team?: Phil Goff and David Cunliffe (with a great deal of help from David Parker) have seized the high moral ground on fiscal policy. The 2011 General Election has finally become a genuine contest.

LABOUR’S TAX POLICY is as much a moral declaration as it is an economic statement. It speaks to our notions of fairness and equal treatment every bit as directly as it addresses the investor’s love affair with real estate.

This re-focusing of the electorate’s attention on the revenue-gathering aspects of fiscal policy is as timely as it is necessary. For far too long politicians of conservative mien have pretended that the only good tax is a dead one. That governments can go on blithely emptying-out the revenue side of the public ledger, (or, as they prefer to characterise it: “putting money back in the tax-payer’s pocket”) with impunity.

Not that they believed a word of their own propaganda. Even the densest conservative politician must have been aware that drastic cuts in revenue would, eventually, have to be balanced by equally drastic cuts in expenditure.

Nor were the more conservative sorts of politicians ever truly averse to a fiscal policy of slash and burn. Indeed, there are many on the Right who regard slashing and burning as the whole point of the exercise.

 

“MY GOAL”, boasted the far-Right American lobbyist, Grover Norquist, “is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

Nor was this idle rhetoric on Norquist’s part.

As anyone who follows American politics knows only too well, Norquist and his corporate sponsors have been as good as their eliminationist word. All over the United States, federal and state expenditures are being slashed, and tens-of-thousands of public servants laid-off.

And, in America, these firings have moved way beyond “the back office”. The United States’ once proud system of public education is being systematically starved of funds while massive sums are being voted to the corporate providers of private education in so-called “charter schools”.

To undercut the inevitable resistance from aggrieved public-sector workers, Republican Party governors have stripped the public-sector unions of the right to organise, strike, or engage in any effective form of collective bargaining.

So crazed has the American Right become since the onset of the global financial crisis, that the Republican majority in the House of Representatives is threatening to pull the plug on the US Government’s ability to pay its bills. Unmoved by the warnings of Wall Street that such a move would cause the United States to default on its debt – plunging the world into a new and exponentially more serious global crisis – the far-right “Tea Party” faction of the Republican Party refuses to be swayed.

Unless President Obama agrees to reduce federal expenditures by more than a trillion dollars, congressional permission for his administration to exceed the “debt ceiling” – i.e. honour America’s debts – will be refused.

That expenditure cuts on this scale would effectively dismantle what remains of the United States’ anaemic social-welfare system, far from restraining the Tea Partiers, explains why they have so far rejected every one of the President’s attempts at reaching a compromise. As one American pundit put it: “The Republicans are refusing to take ‘Yes’ for an answer!” 

THIS, THEN, is the logical end-point of the tax-cutting, expenditure-slashing, “austerity” mania currently gripping the Right – not just in the US but also here in New Zealand.

That’s why Labour’s embrace of a Capital Gains Tax is so important. It signals that a line in the sand has been drawn by the Labour caucus.

On one side stand all the democratic achievements of the New Zealand people: the public provision of health, education and welfare services; the State’s active engagement in the provision and maintenance of New Zealand’s basic infrastructure; it’s guardianship of our natural environment; its stewardship of our culture.

On the other side stand all those commercial interests slavering to turn these collective achievements into opportunities for private gain. The ideologues who would drown our state – along with all that it stands for and protects – in Mr Norquist’s bathtub.

The Norquists of this world see the welfare state as an unnecessary evil. But, in its place they would raise something even more malign: plutocracy. A state in which a citizen's worth is measured exclusively by their wealth, and where the only truly punishable crime is poverty.

It was the US Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, who said: “Taxes are the price we pay for civilisation.”

Labour agrees.

This essay was originally published in The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 15 July 2011.