Destiny is all excited

right. talk about a massive debate going on in my abscence... I'm getting in on this thing.

Ok, yes I do live in the ohario-belmont area. My bit of khandallah is just over the line. So yeah, if I am still living here next year when the election comes, my vote will basically be wasted as it will end up doing nothing in a seat that peter dunne holds, has held and will hold for a very long time. Instead, If I'm in the center of the city, it can go towards supporting a labour candidate in a seat where the outcome is NOT so certain.

I agree with you about not voting for someone because of a single issue. Thats why I have huge arguments with some of my friends because they're going to vote for ACT because of their pro-Israel view despite the fact that they disagree with every single other ACT policy. But Peter Dunne has a moral code and an outlook on life and a plan for how people should run their lives that I do not agree with. And he'd probably say exactly the same thing about me but thats kinda irrelavent here as I'M the one deciding on who to give my vote to. I do not think he is a lesser human being. I just think that his moral code and POV are extremely skewed in a direction that I do not like.

I agree with you on what you said in a later post about needing people from all areas of the political spectrum. I'm not going to vote for the greens. I'm also not going to vote for ACT. But I can see the purpose of having both of these parties in existence. I can't see the point of NZ First existing as it seems to just be a vehicle for Winston to get free flights and have old grannies throw their knickers at him while he spouts racist sentiments at the public but thats a seperate issue. Democracy allows people to express their views and for them to be represented in the government. So good on the right wing capitalist pigs of ACT and the dirty commie unwashed hippies of the Greens for having enough supporters to get them into the government.

But I dislike other people twisting a religion that could actually be quite decent if you go back to the basic bones of it and using it to get themselves into power. Using your own personal religion to try and guide what decisions you make about the entire country and what the rest of the country can and can't do is something that I very much disagree with. Hence why I disagree with the United Future party.

Imagine this: We have all been vegetarian for most of history. Sure there were some notorious meat eaters throughout history but mostly they were thrown into jail. Just recently, in the last few decades, more and more people are "coming out", as it were, saying that they enjoy a good steak now and then. But the government refuses to legalise this... Now what harm does one person enjoying a good steak do to another vegetarian person? Absolutely none. The main party in government is against steaks. But there are some parties made up of omnivores who support legalising meat.

Why should the government make its personal views the yardstick for the rest of the country? What harm does one family having meat on a sunday do to the next door family who are eating tofu?

Stupid parallel but its apt. It's not just about the civil union act though that is one of the more obvious parallels. It's about any act of life which does not harm any other person (vegetarianism, personal religion, way of life). Why should anyone force anyone else to live by their standards. By giving more freedoms to people (Ie the freedom to eat meat) you don't take away the freedom of another person (ie not to eat meat).

And the United Future party, I feel, would be in danger of taking away freedoms belonging to other people purely because they do not wish to make use of them themselves.

I don't know if this has been entirely coherent, but I hope I've gotten my point across.

 

I think that was a brilliant post. Except for the logical fallacies in the above argument. Why just 'people'? Define 'people'.
You'd really struggle to justify it, as someone enjoying a good steak really does do a lot of harm to someone/thing that, according to many traditional philosophical definitions, could be a 'person'.

I dunno. I'm off-topic, I just found it notable that your analogy was faulty.

Peace, love, and open doors,

Matty.

 

I agree with you that one person eating a steak is NOT good for the animal that that steak happens to come from. But I could have used anything there, not necessarily meat. Perhaps chocolate. Or Pasta. Or that random stone on the ground.

 

Yeah, true. One difference between steak and chocolate though.

 

well considering that meat has been a major food source for the last many tens of thousands of years, we could argue the traditional and biological aspects of eating meat.

but i agree eating meat is surely not fun for the animal being eaten, nor is it when a lion eats it, or a dog eats it. or a cat goes and eats a bird....


but the argument really has nothing to do with meat at all. LOL



i don't think that peter dunne will ever get into a position power enough power to cause harm to your and my way of life. and so-far my "ohariu belmont" area has been in very good shape for the last number of elections. so his track record is fairly good. and so far i havn't lost any rights in this area as a non christian....



Alltaken

 

*Warning: the following is emotionally charged and borders on rash idiocy*

The neo-con backlash had a friend of mine go Christian this year. She now speaks to me with silky tones of pity about how I should at least *try* things with a girl - really rather condescending.
She was VERY upset when I wrote a certain letter to the local student mag against U.F. Frankly, if my Christian friends are convinced of certain biblical "truths" by his and others' "reasonable" attitude, then I'd much rather see them having as little say as is possible. My daily life is affected by views on my sexuality FAR too much as it is. The sooner another bible basher steps off the pulpit and lets me get on with my life, and my partners, and my life, and my beliefs, the better.
Sexuality and sex should be non-issues outside of fucking STDs and emotions.
Nor do his stances on parenting impress me, knowing many GREAT single parents.
Fine, so he's doing okay in your tiny little neck of the woods - the area that he holds, that's groovy. He, and all his fellows of Word, aren't helping anything much in the greater scheme of things.

Some favourite quotes from my personal logs of email exchanges with the U.F. MPs (these citations make me wanna take these politicians home in a jar and google at them - they're so deludedly cute in some perverse way!):

[My favourite has to be refering coldly to adoption as "borrowing children", or perhaps it's Paul Smith's "brought up with [it is] parents" grammatical mistake (fucking English major that I am)]

Peace, love, and open doors,
Matt.

 

I got similar responses when I spammed all 120 mps with an email supporting civil unions... Cheeky, I know. I was rather amused and felt rather warmly towards a woman from ACT who as a response to the spam other people sent her, signed everyone up to the ACT newsletter.

 

Haha! Cute. Yeah, I maintained heated debate over a number of emails with them until they finally stopped saying "Thank you for your courteous email" and started simply giving me the silent treatment. It was an awesome month or so.
I'm a sucker for arguing the crap out of people.

 

well, you saw my correspondence with the right honourable Peter Dunne. The cowardly bastard never replied to my email which totally lashed him out.
*becomes 9 years old*
HA HA LAAAASSHED!!!!

 

lol

well as someone who voted him in last time. perhaps i can send him an e-mail arguing my point. and see what he says.

Alltaken

 

wow...so much to debate....well, you know my views on veggieism - tamsyn, yeah, i think chocolate is a MUCH less controversial example. But, i do know what you are trying to say.

Doug, i think get where you are coming from too. Personally, I'd rather stab my eyes out with white hot pokers than vote for the dunnster, but that's just me
I just resent the way he appealed to people with his 'comon sense' ideals, then, when he got in he was like 'surprise!, i'm part of a very religious party"


now of course, people could have found that out, but really, how many people bother to vote, let alone research the candidates?

I just think that dunne has his own religious interests before the nation's. A better eg is maybe ashraf chowdry, who is able to put his own religious doubts aside to vote for the people he is representing. Ark, that makes no sense, but i'm exausted. I can't say what i mean...i'll come back later