He says, “the Left needs to give up its racial separatism and recognize the goal of a colourblind future (even if they think it’s too early to dispense with our concept of race quite yet).”

Which is kinda strange because in the previous paragraphs he’s accusing them of dogmatic romanticism and emotive language (“racial separatism” anyone?). Positive discrimination is in fact a pragmatic and PROVEN approach to some of the injustices in our society. It seems Richard has an ideological problem with positive discrimination, precisely the thing he was criticising in his opening paragraphs.

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BUT, remember that the Greens are a minority party. An excess of pragmatism makes you toothless. You’ve got to DEMAND a yard, BOTTOM LINE a foot, to end up with maybe an inch and a half. That’s politics.

In a political party, the usual dynamic is that the base is more radical than the politicians. This leads to endless tensions and extensive internal blood-letting, at least in parties where the base have any say in anything … what I find admirable in the Greens, is that the MPs manage to stay radical. In fact, they are probably less pragmatic than I would be, in the same situation (with the possible exception of Rod). More power to them!

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With the elections tomorrow, I thought I’d outline my reasons for voting Green. But to break the one-eyed partisan patterns one sees on most NZ blogs these days, I’m going to balance this with some criticism too…

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My band played a gig last night and in talking to a whole bunch of people there – musicians, music-lovers and others – they all share the same sentiment: that National is pandering to the selfish and narrow-minded, and that people voting National because of tax cuts are selfish and conceited. There seems to be a consensus on this with various other individuals I have spoken with too – many of whom are progressive Christians who are concerned that this election has been mainly about “what is there in it for me?”.

In my comment on a earlier blog, I mentioned how I used to be a member of the Libertarianz – a party that is more extreme and conservative than National and ACT put together. They literally preach the virtues of selfishness. Incidentally, their free-market philosophy is based on the teachings/theories of Ayn Rand, who has a book called ‘The Virtue of Selfishness’ – an oft-cited text by Libz members and laissez-faire advocates. Funny that huh?

Indeed, the cause of the Left is a mutual cause.

Perhaps the cause of the Right is mutual too – but only insofar as a consensus that greed and selfishness are moral virtues.

They are so divided this election because they differ on:
1) The means by which to screw this country over;
2) How far they should screw over the poor, disadvantaged, and various minorities;
3) The extent to which the rich should be benefited even further; and
4) Which minority group to focus their attacks on – Muslims, gays and lesbians, or Asians.

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