Useful falsehoods: New Zealand�s secular left narrative

[Raphael]

Dr. Glenn Peoples (former TWebber for those of you who don't know him) made this very interesting blog post over at his RightReason.org blog (posted in it's entirety with permission):

http://rightreason.org/2015/useful-f...eft-narrative/

Source: Right Reason

Perils of Perception 2015: A 33 Country Study.here, and here is a presentation of the findings with participant responses compared with the correct answer. Here are a few interesting highlights. The questions at the front of my mind as I read this were: What false narratives do many of us tend to believe about our country, and what interests are served by holding these false beliefs? Why might we hold them, in spite of the facts?

Inequality

ReligionWe are a more religiously affiliated country than is helpful for the narrative some people prefer.

© Copyright Original Source

[Starlight]

This is mainly a matter of the study's "correct" answers being wrong.

Their claim that 37% are non-religious comes from a pew study a few years ago. Okay, well I see your pew study and raise you census data. In the 2013 census, 41.9% identified as non-religious. The rate has been steady rising by 1% per year for the last 20 years, so extrapolating that to 2015 gives us around 44% non-religious. Furthermore, 10% of people either object or give no answer, and splitting those non-answers 50-50 between the non-religious and Christian categories, gives us the stat that 49% of the population are non-religious.

NZers surveyed guessed 49% on average, so they were absolutely correct. I suspect the reason they are so correct about this is that there have been numerous news articles discussing how the census data shows the population is just about to tick over from majority religious to majority non-religious, therefore many people would immediately get this stat right having seen it in the news.

As for income inequality, the major issue with that is there isn't a reliable source of data on that subject. Whatever numbers are asserted to be "correct" are fictitious. The richest of the rich are notoriously good at hiding their money in trusts, off-shore accounts, tax-havens, etc and the government makes almost zero effort to collect any sort of accurate data on the subject.

The overall thesis of the blog post that the irreligious left is uninformed compared to the religious right is:
University-educated people in New Zealand disproportionately vote for the Green party in massive numbers.

[Glenn P]

[Starlight]

Random question... since your blog post seems to be against the "irreligious left" as you put it, I'm assuming you see yourself as part of the "religious right"? How on earth do you reconcile being right wing with being Christian?!?

Jesus in the gospels seems to be slightly further left than Karl Marx, in the sense that he literally thinks the rich are going to hell, that judgement will be based on how we treat the poor, that people should give 100% of their money to the poor, and he spends more of his time talking about wealth and poverty than any other issue. I get that in the uneducated parts of America (where they basically seem to just about believe that the bible teaches the US Constitution, that Jesus said to carry guns, and that Paul said not to get an abortion) that there is such a thing as the "religious right"... but in other saner parts of the world that actually read the bible and pay attention to its teachings, the religious groups have been on the economic left - eg in New Zealand the majority religious group has been the Anglican Church which has always been incredibly active in its social-gospel, and basically the reason for existence of the Salvation Army has been to help the poor and needy, and likewise Catholics have always leaned left as a whole - as the current Pope is exemplifying in his rhetoric against wealth and the excesses of capitalism.

How exactly does someone like you who's done theological study through to phd level in a non-US country come to regard themselves as being on the "religious right"? It seems like a complete oxymoron. You can either follow Jesus or be right-wing, but hardly both.

[demi-conservative]

that Jesus said to carry guns

"and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one"
If roman empire had guns it would be guns here.

You can either follow Jesus or be right-wing, but hardly both.

You can be stupid or else follow Jesus!!

[Mountain Man]

In Dimbulb's world, Obama is a right-leaning moderate, and "far-right" is basically equivalent to Hitler.

[Carrikature]

Pretty interesting. I took the test myself. I tended to be over by 5-10% on most aspects. My wife was really off on the economic equality question, but the rest of her answers matched mine fairly well.

[Starlight]

"and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one"
If roman empire had guns it would be guns here.

I didn't really mean it quite that literally, but thanks for proving my point I guess.

In Dimbulb's world, Obama is a right-leaning moderate, and "far-right" is basically equivalent to Hitler.

MM, since Glenn's outside the US, he likely shares my international perspective on politics if he follows it much (ie he's likely not inside the US bubble of crazy).

Obama is friends with the current leader of our right-wing government, and their policies are similar in many respects (although Obama's healthcare policy is off-the-spectrum to the right of anything that would be remotely acceptable here).

Donald Trump seems to have been upping his best Hitler impersonation game, saying Muslims should have to wear badges and be registered in a national database, and most recently be banned from entering the country. Replace "Muslims" with "Jews" and that's sounding pretty Hitler-like. Not to mention the Mexicans immigrants, who he says are mostly rapists and drug smugglers, and only "some of whom" are good people. Hitler was pretty wide-ranging in terms of the various groups he decided were undesirables, and Trump seems similar in that regard. Trump's main foreign policy positions are that he'd make the US army much bigger than it currently is so that everyone else in the world would be terrified into submission, that he'd hit ISIS so hard that they wouldn't know what hit them and that he'd take their oil. Massive expansion of the army, an attack on your enemies with utterly overwhelming force, and taking their resources... again that all has a Hitler-esque vibe to it. On the plus side, at least Trump and Hilter aren't theocrats, unlike others in the Republican primary such as Carson, Cruz, Huckabee, and Santorum who seem to desire to turn America into a Christian version of Iran where they are the Ayatollah and things they view as unimportant (like the constitution, laws, and supreme court judgements) come second to God's will and God's law as interpreted by them.

[Starlight]

For those wanting to test their skills distinguishing Trump from Hitler, the UK Telegraph has a little game halfway down this article called "Who said it: Donald Trump or Adolf Hitler?" See if you can beat my 7/10 score.

The media sure is having fun with this one:


The Washington Post and Salon decided to be tasteful and compared him to Mussolini rather than Hitler.

[Bill the Cat]

abe.jpg

[Mountain Man]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/12039203/David-Cameron-Donald-Trumps-call-for-Muslim-ban-is-divisive-unhelpful-and-quite-simply-wrong.html

A Donald Trump quote from the article, incidentally the only direct quote from him in the entire screed:

"Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life."

It really doesn't sound that crazy. And as I pointed out in another thread, there is actually a precedent in the US for restricting immigration.

So, Trump says something that in context is perfectly sensible and consistent with current US laws and legal precedent, and for this he is vilified as the next Hitler. Yeah, O.K.