The risks of creating a two-tier society

It's time we had some debate about the division that's being created between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated

New Zealand is becoming a class-based society, and no-one seems to be blinking an eyelid. The Prime Minister accepted serenely that her Government’s policies were creating “two different classes of people”, the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. “That is what it is,” she agreed. But there’s very little commentary or public concern about this. Even the Opposition’s rumblings have been muted. Maybe most people are so sick of the costs and uncertainty of lockdowns that they don’t want to think about the collateral damage of creating a two-tier society. But creating division is a fraught proposition even if you think it’s justified. We cannot take this so lightly. It’s time we had some debate. Click to keep reading

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A new university reminds us to beware the concentration of power

The arrival of UATX illustrates a timeless truth

America’s getting a new “anti-woke” university, the University of Austin at Texas. Announcing its arrival and arguing for its necessity, the incoming university president of UATX opened with, “So much is broken in America. But higher education might be the most fractured institution of all.” New Zealand’s often a price-taker of US cultural trends, so perhaps on some level this development has some relevance for higher education here. But in the announcement and the inevitable controversy that greeted it is a more fundamental lesson that applies much more widely than the universities. It’s a lesson about the dangers of concentrated power. Click to keep reading

*Princeton University, which hosted Dorian Abbot’s cancelled MIT lecture. Photo by Tim Alex on Unsplash*

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What's the future for NZ media?

"RIP centrism", says ex-Mediaworks head of news Hal Crawford

Hal Crawford has an interesting view about the future of New Zealand media—one of increasing polarisation along the political spectrum. As the headline of his recent article on The Spinoff puts it, “Stuff is gradually moving left while the Herald inches right.” Crawford has an illuminating insider-outsider perspective—he was the Chief News Officer at Mediaworks until returning to his native Australia last year where he now consults and comments on our media and theirs—and he makes a compelling and somewhat alarming case. Click to keep reading

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The truth in environmentalism

Part VIII of our stroll through “How to be a Conservative”

Our modern word “steward” is an Old English mash-up, a combination of stig (house or hall) and weard (to guard or watch). A medieval steward looked after the estates and business of his feudal lord and represented him in his absence. So a steward is someone who takes care of the place we call home, for the good of others. This concept of stewardship is at the heart of Roger Scruton’s analysis of environmentalism. Conservatives believe that society is “a partnership between the living, the dead, and the unborn”; what we have now, we hold in trust for future generations, including our culture and institutions and the physical world we inhabit. It is therefore “astonishing,” says Scruton, that environmentalism is not at the heart of conservative politics. Click to keep reading

*Lake Pukaki. Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash*

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A Place to Stand

November 2021 | The risks of a two-tier…