This week, the argument before the Supreme Court in Trump v. Anderson captivated the nation as the justices considered the disqualification of former President Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot. For some of us, the argument brought back vivid memories of covering Bush v. Gore almost 25 years ago. While one justice (Clarence Thomas) […]
Graham Adams writes — Sir Apirana Ngata has a pre-eminent place in the pantheon of Māori luminaries. He is widely regarded as a visionary leader who, in an illustrious political career, championed biculturalism when assimilationist policies were the norm. He energetically promoted Māori language and culture, and land reform. He was an MP for nearly […]
Chris Trotter writes – THERE WAS A TIME when a leftist’s definition of “leftism” corresponded pretty closely to everybody else’s definition. The term identified a coherent worldview – to the point where knowing where someone stood on one issue enabled them to predict with surprising accuracy where they stood on a host of others. If […]
Three years ago a friend of mine who’s a District Court Judge asked me if I would be guest speaker at the annual DCJ shindig, scheduled that year for the Hilton in Taupo. Despite a feeling of significant intellectual inferiority, I accepted on the condition that all I would talk about were personal experiences from…
On February 1 Sean Plunket re-played the audio of Don Brash’s 2004 Orewa speech at The Platform. To listen to the entire speech, go here. Alternatively, the full text of the speech is reproduced below. Today Don reflects: “It’s very long – really far too long for a Rotary Club speech. I should have taken…
Heads Up: Jeremy Corbyn’s greatest mistake was to give the ruling elites and their enablers advance warning that he was coming for their power, their purse, and their privilege. Candidate for the Green Party co-leadership, Chloe Swarbrick, appears to share Corbyn’s naïve assumption that those who own the system will sit idly by while a…
Last Sunday, the Sunday Star-Times recalled on its front page the “fiery debate” triggered by my speech to the Orewa Rotary Club just 20 years earlier. Articles by several authors in the same paper brought the debate up-to-date and warned of the dangers of ACT’s Treaty Principles Bill, which the National Party’s coalition agreement with…
I’ve written a lot about New Zealand lately, in particular the schools’ and government’s attempt to force the teaching of “indigenous ways of knowing” (mātauranga Māori) into the science classroom as a system coequal in value with modern science. That means not only equal classroom time, but equal respect, treating indigenous ways of knowing as […]
Over the last several months, I’ve seen and read about demonstrations on our campus by the pro-Palestinian group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which apparently has roughly 200 campus branches in the U.S., Canada, and New Zealand. SJP has been particularly active since last year’s October 7 massacre of Israelis and others, which they […]
Screeds have been written about the Treaty of Waitangi. And there’s more to come as division over race and rights ramps up.Its content and meaning are getting lost in the crossfire and the danger of ‘contestants’ talking past each other looms, if not already happening.When matters get murky, and misunderstandings abound, there is also a…
The combination of Canadian wokeness and the migration across the Pacific of New Zealand’s “indigenous ways of knowing” trope has led to this ad by The University of Victoria. The U of V wants to hire three candidates in any branch of science with expertise “in either (a) working with Indigenous ways of knowing, or…
I give him a 30-40% chance, which is perhaps generous because I am rooting for him. Bryan Caplan, who is more optimistic, offers some analysis and estimates that Milei needs to close a fiscal gap of about five percent of gdp. I have two major worries. First, if Milei approaches fiscal success, the opposing parties […]
Last Friday night, TV One’s lead item on the 6pm news was a story by reporter Te Aniwa Hurihanganui. She had scored a leaked piece of advice not yet considered by Cabinet that was intended to warn ministers in the new government that they would run into trouble with Maori if they backed David Seymour’s…
Here’s an eight-minute clip from Bill Maher in which he touts a new rule: 2024 is supposed to be “The Year of Sanity”. Maher gives several examples of pervasive insanity, the most prominent being the likely reelection of Trump as President. He also mentions tolerance of shoplifting, pro-Palestinian activists, admiration for the Houthis, frantic rumors […]
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
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