Lindsay Perigo: 'I've Had it ... Up to Here!'

Politically Incorrect editorial by Free Radical editor Lindsay Perigo, Friday July 19, 2002.

It's been a while. Sorry about that. Something came along called a general election. We haven't had it yet, but *I* have had it.

I've had it with the blood-lust of the small-town inbreds baying for harsher criminal penalties. I'm all for murderers being dealt with more harshly than they are now, but that is not what drives the "lock 'em up & throw away the key" mob (leaving aside the families of murder victims). These are deranged individuals with a fetish about punishment. They'd rejoice if Saudi-style amputations & stonings were instated here. Not pretty. Even uglier - the politicians who are pandering to them. Friends of liberty these people are not.

I've had it with politicians of all hues proposing more bossy-boot busybodying by Nanny State in the name of "our chooldren." First, the "chooldren" are NOT mine, & I resent having responsibility for them foisted onto me. Second, the area of pre-school education used genuinely to be a parental prerogative, a haven of parental choice, relatively free of the state control & bureaucratic meddling that corrupts primary, secondary & tertiary education. No longer. Pre-school teachers are being hauled out of their establishments to be indoctrinated at state teachers colleges. Politicians are proposing their own version of home invasion in the name of "early intervention programmes" for "at-risk chooldren." Plato's Republic has all but come to pass. Toddlers may be allowed to sleep under their parents' roofs, but the state has taken over their upbringing. All major parties are actively encouraging this or acquiescing to it. The child molesters of the mind can now proceed unimpeded.

I've had it with the spectacle of mass stupidity. I'm thinking in particular of the undecided voters operating the electronic "worm" during the televised leaders' debate, sending it up when leaders proposed more government spending, down when reminded that this would mean higher taxation. Are they so bereft of rudimentary intelligence that they cannot see the connection? Given that these life-forms are apparently disenfranchised Alliance retards looking for somewhere to go after their party's melt-down, the likely answer is, yes. Surprised I am not; appalled I remain.

I've had it especially with the gum-chewing, inarticulate stupidity of first-time voters. A group of these specimens was paraded on Holmes last night. They were students, supposedly the intelligentsia of the future. They could barely string two words together. They just managed to convey, by grunts & ejaculations, that they were going to vote Alliance or Green, if they were going to vote at all (let us hope that they don't). Verily, the child molesters of the mind have already done their work.

I've had it with the spin-doctors who have sanitised the politicians of any vestige of genuine conviction & emotion, who are presenting us, not with flesh-&-blood human beings but with bromide-reciting puppets. Policies aside, one yearns for a Muldoon or Kirk who would laugh the spinsters out of court. As it is we are stuck with the morbid mediocrity of plastic politics. The Prime Minister's (justified) anger at interviewer John Campbell, which sent the spinsters into a spin, provided a rare & refreshing exception.

Speaking of Campbell, I've had it with interviewers who, by boorishness & deceit, have brought an honourable art into disrepute. I belong to that proud tradition of trail-blazing television interviewers unafraid to ask tough questions & persist with them. But the likes of myself, Brian Edwards & Ian Fraser never resorted to deception to obtain an interview in the first place, as hard-core left-winger Campbell did to lure the Prime Minister into the studio for the now-infamous "corngate" interview; we never, as Campbell & fellow hard-core leftie Kim Hill do, engaged in outrageous talking-over of our guests, whereby they had scarce opened their mouths to answer a question before we barged in again. Campbell & Hill are simply oafs, & I am sick of them. Has this anything to do with liberty? You bet. It bespeaks a society in which common decency & courtesy have gone out the window. Liberty is not long for such a world.

Above all I've had it with the ongoing tide of moral cannibalism that has engulfed this election, as all others. An election, said H. L. Mencken, is "an advance auction of stolen goods." That's certainly true of this one, as even the most fiscally responsible of the main parties, ACT, commits itself to no reductions in taxpayer (i.e. stolen) funding of health & education. The other parties, meanwhile, promise outlandish spend-ups, & the cannibals lap it up. Nauseating.

I've had it with the corporate welfarists in the business community who snuggle up to government, asking for handouts or offering bribes. I've had it with press releases like this one, indicating that it's not just ACT with whom the Business Roundtable is in bed:

"The government is to be commended for its Partnerships for Excellence Framework, announced yesterday by the Associate Minister of Education (Tertiary Education) and the Associate Finance Minister, according to Norman LaRocque, Policy Advisor for the New Zealand Business Roundtable. According to Mr LaRocque, the joint public-private sector investment framework could be a catalyst for more innovation and the modernisation of the New Zealand tertiary education sector. Mr LaRocque said the notion of public-private partnerships is not new. 'Countries such as the UK, Canada, Australia and the United States make extensive use of public-private partnerships in various forms. In the UK alone, the private sector has invested more than $NZ4 billion in the education sector through public-private partnerships, of which one-quarter is in the higher education sector,' he said."

Yes, I've had it with all this horse dung. To quote W. C. Fields: "All in all, I'd rather be in Philadelphia." Circa 1776.

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