BJ
My Ohio friend agrees with you and laments he cannot join our lifeboat. He has a chronic illness and resulting unemployment. He rejoices in what I say about our islands in the ocean and our liberal society.

I agree about farming and related food production.

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The evangelical movement has raised religion to an importance in the US that is easily double that in any other western culture. The problem is growing worse as ignorance increases, and ignorance in the US is increasing far faster than the population.

I didn’t come here by accident. The US culture is turning toxic by degrees and most of the frogs don’t know they’re being cooked in the melting pot that is the formerly United States of America.

I hope it has finished with the lurch to the right, but it has exacerbated the economic situation by blowing asset bubbles with very easy money in the lead up to a K-Cycle winter. Greens need to consider what happens here when the world economy tanks. I think we do a pretty good job with the perspective we have, but the beating the world economy is in for is not your everyday sort of recession. It will (I think) be a good thing to be a farmer.

respectfully
BJ

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BJ,
I correspond very regularly by email with an American friend in Ohio. At the time of the Iraq war and then when the second Bush elections were occuring, he frequently said to me that as he was in a minority he could not express his non-religious, rather left wing, but very humanitarian views. He was envious of our freedom to speak, debate, learn and think here in NZ. Not having travelled, I blithely imagined all the “western” nations enjoyed the same freedoms of speech that I do. So his and your comments shock me.

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As an atheist I am unused to even being permitted to state an opinion , such is the prejudice created in the US on these issues. I hope that NZ can avoid that sort of problem, and I believe that it can. The US suffers the ravages of religion because it has embraced profound ignorance in its electorate. NZ still has a good education system. This, one of our more important resources, must be maintained and affordable.

Environmentalism applied to people… they must be nurtured, their health maintained, and their growth and wisdom encouraged as they become a resource in their own right.

respectfully
BJ

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Thank you Frog.
I am proud of our country having the Civil Union option. Proud of the smoking ban. And, whilst the concept of prositution saddens me, if people feel this is their choice to work in this way then it is only fair that they should not be criminalised and that they can actively work towards a safer work place.

Sure, there were very vocal minorities against two these laws, but I recall most of it came from christian religious groups who displayed the most ugly intolerance of human nature. If anything, it is they who are trying to socially engineer their flocks by brainwashing and stifling health debate.

I believe that a tolerant, inclusive community is a worthy goal.

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None of the political parties have a majority, meaning the voters of a party are a minority. National is alienating it’s own voters, and they can’t see it.

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