The myraid of problems that scream from those two sentences is so large I am not sure where to begin."proposes setting a level of population New Zealand could sustain and leaving room within that for climate change refugees from Pacific Islands.
They also want parents educated about the impacts of population growth when they are planning their family size and how far apart to have children."
National, ACT and the Maori Party are declaring it a step in the direction of China's one child policy.
Rodney Hide, making a carbon credits joke, said "that perhaps if parents planted a field of trees, they might be able to have twins."
David Farrar makes the point that New Zealand already has a declining population rate and has done for some time anyway which makes one wonder why issue the policy?
Zen Tiger quotes from Frog Blog "Do we as humans have a 'right to breed'?" this reminded me of other crazy lefty ideas like Jim Flynn's Thoughts on Contraception.
Keith Locke, at a loss to understand why most New Zealanders would react negatively to the policy, claims they have been misinterpreted:
"There is no way the Green Party would ever dictate to any parent how many children they should have, ... Every child is a loved and wanted child. It would also be racist to try to dictate family size, given that the various ethnic groups in our society have different birthrates."There are two problems in the above quote that are not being criticised about the blogosphere that I will highlight here.
The every child is a loved and wanted slogan is ambiguous. It could mean that every child that comes into existence, no matter how it comes into existence, is loved and wanted, or, it could mean that every child that is unwanted should be taken out of existence. Both these situations would lead to every child being wanted.
The statement is a eugenicist slogan promoted primarily by family planning movement which advocate the latter interpretation and promote the latter interpretation via abortion, contraception and sterilisation, campaigning against unplanned pregnancy. Now, I am not opposed to contraception or sterilisation or people knowing how to prevent unplanned pregnancy. My problem is that this organisation is opposed to all and every unplanned pregnancy, even those within stable, married, well-positioned-to-provide families. Dig a little on Family Planning and you find they are a sinister organisation whose roots are in eugenics, we have posted previously on the odiousness of family planning here.
So when Keith Locke used this statement which interpretation did he mean? Given the context of the policy, I think we can safely assume the latter.
The second issue is the Green's definition of racism the reasons they cite for why if they were in fact dictating how many kids families should have it would be wrong. Lets have a closer look at Keith Locke's statement:
"It would also be racist to try to dictate family size, given that the various
ethnic groups in our society have different birthrates."
His argument essentially is that ethnic groups have different birth-rates so to impose one birth-rate, to disagree or be at odds with another ethnicity's viewpoint on this subject, is racist. Racism according to the Greens is defined as disagreeing with the cultural values of another. I don't agree with the cannibalism practices of some ethnicities - guess I am a racist.
Further, the only reason he offers as to why "the Green Party would ever dictate to any parent how many children they should have" is that to do so would be racist. The fact that such a dictum would be nanny-statist, eugenicist and is so far out of the realm of the proper role of the state that it is just plain, outright, wrong seems to be lost on him; but why am I not surprised?
Some good statements there. I like the observation that the Greens have no idea why people are reacting the way they are.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is there thinking is inconsistent even within a single press release. They don't want to tell people how many children to have, but they want to educate parents as to how irresponsible and wrong it is to have children, given the planet's population.
And they polish that off with urgings to head of to the Family Planning Clinic, whose main purpose is to help people plan how not to have a family.
Guilt trip for the middle class.
As for racism, they could have a little chat about how they feel about Catholics who (well, the ones that understand the doctrine) are not opposed to life and see it as the true gift it is. Such Catholics that properly understand this also practice celibacy outside of marriage - the two go hand in hand, which is the responsibility the Greens would hope for, and yet their simplistic policy implies "two kids - bad".
The populations of wealthy Christian countries are declining. Get the poorer countries to the same standard of living, and we would see declining populations.
However, the ultimate solution is not abortion. It is education, wealth, a christian society and most of all TRUE RESPECT for LIFE.
IMHO.
Matt, cannibalism is just an invention of whitey's in their objection to native cultures, no one ever ate another person.
ReplyDeleteIf they are willing to abort and sterilise themselves, it is not beyond comprehension that climate change alarmists will enforce their bizarre behaviour on others.
Zen Tiger - exactly!
ReplyDeleteHowever under Green mentality it is not racist to criticse Christian culture, it is only racist to criticise the cultures they deem worthy of respect.
Of course the Klu Klux Klan only respected the races they deemed worthy of respect too.
Such is the ludicrousity we enter when we define racism as mere disagreement with a culture instead of adopting a more sensible view that racism involves viewing a person as inferior and worthy of less right purely on the basis of their race.
Yes Bethyada, it is bad race relations to teach that Maori did bad things before the Europeans came.
ReplyDeleteTo ensure that the next generation is adequately informed and has good cultural sensitivity we need to teach them only the terrible things europeans did when they came here.
Incidentally my son was recently given a detention because he wrote in his social studies book that he was sick of being told about the european abuses and the wonderful Maori culture when they omitted to mention things like cannibalism. Admittedly he did write it in a somewhat abrupt manner but somehow I doubt he would have gotten a detention if he had used the same kind of language to describe european abuses.(My son is part-maori BTW).