Posts by Keir Leslie
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But I don't think we can take a naive consequentialist approach to the state's treatment of religion --- again, consider if Buddhism were `more beneficial' than Islam; would it be right to help Buddhism more? I rather think not.
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By Crown I don't mean the pakeha population, but rather the government exercised by the Crown --- that is, we'd get a particularly complete and radical implementation of tino rangatiratanga.
(But of course it is ridiculous and rather abhorrent; that's the point, that what Ben and Tom are talking about implies some very very disturbing things.)
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And if you find historical agreements more important than ones made by the people who are expected to uphold them, bully for you.
But this is rather dodgy for you are not proposing to make a new agreement between the Crown and Maori --- and if you were, Maori would have the perfect right to tell the Crown to leave and return to the status quo ante pakeha --- but rather to simply renege on the previous agreement and stick a new one you like more in its place.
That's not fair. You are quite happy to benefit from the Treaty, but not to fulfil your side of the bargain.
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Ah, perfidious albion lives!
(Isn't it odd that the idea that the Treaty might be outdated tends to come up when Maori assert their rights under it? I say, do you think there's something happening there?)
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Even if you do believe in the Norman Yoke, the rights in Magna Carta are merely the ancient rights, liberties, and privileges of Britons. (In fact under that schema Magna Carta is not a grant of rights but a recognition of rights, this is important, because the king can't take that back. But no matter! We are not Gothics.)
Magna Carta was extended by people who owned it. The Crown doesn't own the Treaty in that way.
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But that's because either they never did, or the English/British -- OK, the Crown-in-Parliament or possibly just the Crown back when it was all a wee bit constitutionally laxer -- changed their meaning.
The New Zealand Crown can't do that to the Treaty because it has no right to edit it, but the English/British had every right to edit Magna Carta. There is a fundamental difference.
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So let us say that the Treaty is a business deal: business deals can't be altered by one party unilaterally, not even 160-odd years down the track.
Magna Carter nowadays establishes a series of important PRINCIPLES around the limitations of Royal perogative and the right of Habeus Corpus
No, that's not true. There are parts of Magna Carta that have the force of law, and they remain law in the full sense, and then there are other parts that have been replaced and refined by Act of Parliament, and then there are parts that have been abrogated by Act of Parliament or similar. But it isn't that the passage of time has done anything to Magna Carta; forces greater than it have acted upon it and changed it. And of course Parliament has the right to change the law, that's what it is there for.
You seem to be proposing that we alter the Treaty unilaterally without reference to the other party, which is, well, there's enough of the North European pagan in me to call it oathbreaking.
(If no-one and everyone is both Maori and not, then the matter is moot; they will all then be entitled to the protections of the Treaty, and so-forth. At the moment that is not the case, so let us stay away from metaphysics.)
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Well, the ICRC has no religious ties. Oxfam doesn't.
The argument is not that organisations which are religious should be ineligible for charitable status, but rather that organisations should not be considered charitable purely because they are religious.
I mean, I don't particularly care if religion has good effects on the world -- suppose you were to discover that Buddhism led to better outcomes than Christianity, would you support pro-Buddhist government propaganda? No, of course not, that'd be obscene.
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I fail to see why that is any less worthy of charitable status than a sports club or cultural entity. Are we so overrun with such heinous/overly rich religions in NZ that we need to suddenly tax their income? I fail to see any widespread problem requiring a fix.
Because in fact I don't think religion is a Good Thing, but I do, broadly speaking, think sport and culture are. Likewise, I am quite happy with the idea that the government should promote sports and culture, but if the government started promoting religion I should be very very unhappy.
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So Keir saw a swastika tatt when visiting a city of 375,000-odd souls and had to have a wee lie down afterwards? The poor dear.
No, Keir was going down the supermarket to get something to eat and saw a chap with a swastika tattoo and thought `what the fuck, that's a bit over the line, eh' and rather thought it a handy anecdote to bring up. (I didn't mention the chap heil-ing away at the Bus Exchange at five-ish in the afternoon, but that would have worked just as well.)
And in fact I didn't go for a line down; I did a proper tutting and shaking of my head then went and got dinner and then I walked home.