The Shepherd and the Flock: De Tocqueville’s Warning and the New Zealand Condition This article arose after I had read a number of different pieces. One was Bryce Edwards’ “Democracy Briefing: The Establishment joins the electricity insurgency” . That in turn led me to Danyl McLuchlan’s Listener article “Fuel for a Crisis”. Then from out of the blue arrived a piece about the state of social media discourse and how volatile, vicious and elemental it can be. All this gave rise to some thinking...

I’ve spent a lot of time pushed many electrons going after the fallacy in New Zealand that indigenous “ways of knowing”—in this case from the Māori—are just as valid as so-called “Western ways of knowing,” which is what Kiwi progressives call “science”. You can see my pieces here , but there are many. This sacralization of the oppressed, whereby the beliefs of minorities are given extra credibility, has now spread to Canada, a pretty woke place. Lawrence Krauss, who now lives in British...

At the heart of the Wellington City Council’s (WCC) decision to transfer water assets to a new, externally governed entity lies a fundamental ethical failure. These assets were not created by the Council, nor do they belong to councillors in any moral sense. They were paid for by Wellingtonians over generations through rates, charges, and debt serviced by the public. The Council holds them in trust , charged with their care, maintenance, and prudent management on behalf of the community....